272 hue. 



Description. — Rue is an evergreen shrubby plant, from two 

 to three feet in height, with firm, cylindrical, bushy stems, 

 covered with a rough greyish bark, but in the young branches, 

 smooth and yellowish green. The leaves are alternate, petio- 

 late, doubly pinnate ; the surface slightly tomentose, punctured, 

 smooth, and of a glaucous or dark blueish green colour ; the 

 leaflets are rather of a thick texture, oblong, elongated, and 

 decurrent at the base, somewhat cuneiform, entire, or obscurely 

 crenate at the margin, the terminal one obovata or cunei- 

 form. The flowers are produced in a terminal corymb, the 

 terminal flowers only, which open first, having the full 

 complement of petals and stamens, the rest have a four- 

 parted calyx, four petals, and eight stamens. The calycine 

 segments are lanceolate, punctured, minutely crenulate, and 

 spreading horizontally. The petals are yellow, ovate, concave, 

 spreading, slightly toothed or wrinkled at the extremity, and 

 are attached by narrow claws. The stamens* of the terminal 

 flower are ten, reclining on the petals, with subulate filaments 

 tipped with ovate yellow anthers. The germen is large, ovate, 

 punctured, deep green, with four crucial furrows, seated on a 

 fleshy receptacle dotted with nectariferous pores, crowned 

 with a short tetragonal style, and a truncate stigma. The fruit 

 is a sub-globose four or five lobed capsule, bursting elastically 

 at the summit of each lobe, and emitting several rough, angular, 

 blackish, reniform seeds. Plate 39, fig. 4, (a) terminal flower 

 from which the petals are detached, magnified ; (6) fruit ; 

 (c) transverse section of the same. 



Rue is a native of the south of Europe, in mountainous and 

 sterile situations, and has been cultivated in our gardens from 

 time immemorial, where it flowers from June to September. 



The generic name, Ruta, is derived from the Greek pum, and 

 that, it is said, from gtw, to set free, on account of the efficacy 



* The stamens exhibit a curious and remarkable phenomenon. They 

 are all fixed in nearly a horizontal position, at first, viz., reclining upon 

 the petals, but one by one they successively rise up and discharge the pollen 

 upon the stigma, and then return to their original posture. This move- 

 ment is not the result of irritability, at least from external agents, as in the 

 stamens of the Barberry, but appears to be a spontaneous act, since they are 

 strong conical bodies, and cannot be forced from their position by a quill or 

 other substance without breaking them. 



