224 LOBELIACE^E. (LOBELIA FAMILY.) 



base not auriculate-dasping : flowers bright blue or violet-purple : akenes lanceolate- 

 oblong, barely 2 Hues long, striate-nervose ; the tip of short (no longer than the 

 breadth of the body) beak soft and usually whitish. Mulgedium pulchellum, 

 Nutt. From New Mexico to California, British Columbia, and eastward. 

 * # Akenes thickish, oblong, with some strong ribs and nerves, contracted at the 



summit into a short but manifest neck. 



3. L. leucophsea, Gray. Stem 3 to 12 feet high, stout, leafy up to the 

 pyramidal rather crowded panicle : leaves ample, sinuately or runcinately 

 pinnatifid, coarsely and irregularly or doubly dentate ; upper cauline sessile 

 by a mostly narrowed but auriculate or partly clasping base : involucre oblong, 

 5 lines high : flowers bluish to yellowish or whitish : pappus sordid or fus- 

 cous. Mulgedium leucophceum, DC. Across the continent from Oregon to the 

 mountains of Carolina and northward. 



ORDER 43. LOBELIACEJE. (LOBELIA FAMILY.) 



Herbs with milky juice, alternate leaves, scattered flowers, irregular 

 5-lobed corolla, and the 5 stamens free from the corolla and united 

 into a tube commonly by their filaments and always by their an- 

 thers. Calyx-tube adherent to the 2-celled, many-seeded capsule: 

 style ane. 



1. Lobelia. Corolla open down to the base on one side. 



2. Laurentia. Corolla with a closed tube. Capsule wholly inferior. 



1. LOBELIA, L. 



Calyx-tube 5-cleft, with a short tube. Corolla with a straight tube and 

 somewhat 2-lipped ; the upper lip of 2 rather erect lobes, the lower lip spread- 

 ing and 3-cleft. Capsule 2-celled, opening at the top. Flowers axillary or 

 chiefly in bracted racemes. 



1. L. cardinalis, L. Stem tall, simple, 2 to 4 feet high, smoothish : 

 leaves oblong-lanceolate, slightly toothed: raceme elongated, rather one-sided: 

 flowers large, deep red ; the pedicels much shorter than the leaf-like bracts. 

 Colorado, and throughout the States eastward. The intense red of the flower 

 varies to rose-color and even white. Known as " Cardinal Flower." 



2. L. Syphilitica, L. Stems simple, 2 to 3 feet high, leafy to the top, 

 somewhat hairy : leaves thin, oblong or ovate-lanceolate, acute at both ends, 

 irregularly serrate : flowers in a long spike-like raceme, light blue, rarely white : 

 sinuses of the calyx with deflexed auricles. From Colorado to Dakota and 

 throughout the States eastward. 



2. LAURENTIA, Micheli. 



Calyx-tube turbinate or oblong. Corolla with its tube as long as the limb, 

 which is like that of Lobelia. Capsule short, 2-valved at the summit. Low 

 herbs, resembling small species of Lobelia, excepting the closed tube of the 

 corolla. Flowers blue. 



