90 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



willi a sort of lid over its mouth. 1 The flowers are solitary, 2 drooping 

 at the summit of a long peduncle. This bears below the calyx three 



Fig. 104. 

 Habit (i). 



Sarracena purpurea. 



Fig. 105. 

 Flower (\). 



Fig. 106. 

 Diagram. 



Fig. 107. 

 Long. sect, of flower. 



bracts, which form a sort of calyculus to the flower. Some half- 

 dozen species of Sarracena are known. 3 



The flower of Darlingionia califomica* has the same general or- 



1 These organs form a sometimes very elon- 

 gated cornet, whose mouth has a dilatation on 

 the outside of variable form, which has often 

 been termed a lid or operculum, with a rather 

 prominent vertical crest running along the 

 whole of the internal angle of its outer sur- 

 face. Botanists were pretty generally agreed to 

 consider the lid as a blade, the urn representing, 

 as it was thought, a hollow petiole. However, 

 the sheathing concavity of the base of the petiole 

 exists towards the base of the leaf, quite distinct 

 from the cavity of the urn. In tracing the 

 development of these parts (in Compt. Rend. 

 Ac. Sc., lxxi. 630 ; in Adansonia, ix. 331, i. 

 380) we have seen that the leaf is depressed at 

 the top into a pit, representing the inner or 

 upper surface of the blade, and this pit it is that 

 afterwards deepens, like a peltate leaf, with its 

 concavity immensely exaggerated. The lining 

 membrane of the urn, covered with liquid-secret- 

 ing hairs, hence must be held to represent the 

 superior epidermis of the leaf. The operculum 

 represents the terminal lobe, more developed 

 than the rest of the edge of this blade, not the 



whole of the blade itself. The vertical crest 

 along the ventral angle is analogous to the corre- 

 sponding prominences or ribs which are often 

 seen on the lower surface of the blade of a pel- 

 tate leaf, extending from the insertion of the 

 petiole to the basilar notch of the blade. 



2 Terminating a large shoot found ending the 

 divisions of the rhizome ; the last leaves on them 

 are replaced by bracts. Later on a younger bud 

 seems to be formed on the side of the first, and 

 is also destined to end in a flower. Hence the 

 subterranean axis of Sarracena is probably a 

 sympodium. 



3 Mill., Icon., t. 241. — Sm., Fxot.-Pot., i. t. 

 53.— Michx., Fl. Bor.-Am., i. 310. — Nutt., 

 Gen., ii. 10 ; in Anier. Phil. Trans., ser. 2, iv. 

 49, t. 1. — De la Pyiaie, in Ann. Soc. Linn. 

 Fa*-., vi. 388, t. 13.— Hook., Fxot. Fl., t. 13. — 

 Ceoome, in Ann. Lye. N.-York, iv. 98, t. 6. — 

 Tore. & Ge., Fl. N.-Amer., i. 58.— Pot. Mag., 

 t. 780, 849, 1710, 3515.— Waip., Rep., i. 108; 

 v. 20; Ann., ii. 25; iv. 169; vii. 82. 



4 Tore., in Smithson. Contrib., vi. 4, t. 12. — 

 B. H., Gen., 48, 965, n. 2— Walp., Ann., iv.169. 



