88 SUMMER FLOWERS. 



occasionally producing a few spindly branches from the base, 

 and everywhere furnished with narrow-lanceolate leaves, At 

 the top of the stem is produced a loose leafy corymb of bright 

 blue flowers, which have five ovate- lanceolate three-nerved 

 acute sepals, five obovate spreading regular petals, and five 

 stamens united below into a hypogynous ring surrounding the 

 roundish ovary, which is crowned by five styles. The capsule 

 is globular or slightly depressed, really five-celled, but the 

 cells being divided into two by a nearly complete partition, it 

 is apparently ten-celled. The stems of this plant furnish the 

 valuable flax fibre, and its seeds yield linseed oil. 



The common Tamarisk * is now found in several parts of 

 the southern coast of England, apparently established, though 

 it is probably only an introduced plant. It is a shrub of mari- 

 time habitat, and being one of the few which thrive in the 

 vicinity of the sea, is very often planted in such situations. It 

 forms a very elegant shrub of five or six feet in height, with 

 slender erect twiggy branches, covered, in place of leaves, with 

 what have the appearance of scales little green imbricating 

 bodies lying close over each other, with a loose spur at their 

 base. The flowers are pinkish, and grow in little spikes or 

 racemes. They are small, and have a calyx of four or five 

 sepals, a corolla with an equal number of petals, as many or 

 twice as many stamens, and a free ovary with three styles. 

 The seeds are each crowned with a tuft of cottony hairs. 



One more illustration of the Thalamiflores, a flower of very 

 irregular structure, must be noted. In moist shady places, 

 chiefly in the north of England and in Wales, may be found 

 in the height of summer, a tall annual plant, with suc- 

 culent branching stems, swollen at the joints, and bearing 

 stalked ovate pale -green flaccid leaves. This is the Touch-me- 



* Tamarix anglica Plate 11 C. 



