LYTHRARIACEjE. 



431 



Lythrum virgatum. 



soaring a great number of ascending and anatropous ovules, with 

 nicropyle inferior and exterior. The fruit, around which persists 

 LB receptacular tube, is a bilocular membranous capsule, septicidal 

 opening irregularly at maturity, the numerous seeds of which 

 contain under their coats a fleshy embryo, with plano-convex coty- 

 ledons, auriculate at base, and a conical in- 

 ferior radicle. The Salicarias are herbaceous 

 plants or shrubby at the base, glabrous or 

 covered with hairs, with tetragonal branches, 

 opposite, verticillate or rarely alternate 

 leaves, entire, without stipules, and flowers ^ 

 united in cymes generally biparous, in the 

 axils of the leaves or bracts which replace 

 them at the top of the branches, in such a 

 manner as, in this case, to form long terminal 

 clusters of cymes (fig. 386, 393). Some 

 oppositipetalous stamens are then reduced to 

 very small dimensions or even disappear 

 entirely, and the petals are somewhat un- 

 equal, the two superior surpassing the four 

 others. Such is L. anomalum,^ a Brazilian 

 plant which has become the type of the 



genus Anisotes.^ The style is sometimes short and sometimes long 

 and exserted, and there are some species in which the ovary is not 

 unfrequently trilocular.* A dozen ^ Salicarias are known ; they 

 inhabit all the temperate regions of the world, and especially marshy 

 localities. 



L. jpungens and two other Chilian species constitute the genus 

 Pleurophora, They are herbaceous or subshrubby plants, with small 

 stiff sharp-pointed leaves. The flowers, ordinarily collected in ter- 

 minal spikes, are 5-7-merous, 5-20-androus, and the gynsecium is 

 composed of a stipitate, eccentric, obliquely compressed, pauciovulate 



Fig. 393. Porti on 

 of inflorescence. 



Salicaria, L. tliymi folium" (H. Mohl. Ann. 

 Sc. Nat. ser. 2, iii. 331.) 



* Red, pink, more rarely white. 



2 A. S.-H. FL Bras. Mer. iii. t. 186. 



^ LiNDL. Introd. ed. 2, 101, 441. The stamens 

 are often reduced to from five to seven in thi.s 

 species, which appears in other respects to con- 

 nect Lythrum with Cujohea. 



"* Especially X. arnhemicum (F. Muell. Fraym. 

 ii. 1 07 ; — Be.nth. Fl. Austral, iii. 299). 



« H. B. K. Nov. Gen et Sp. vi. 192.— A. S.-H 

 op. cit. 129. — Benth. op. cit. 298. — Gren. et 

 GoDR. FL de tr. i. 593.— G. BoiCK. (Estr. JJl. 

 [1853] 405.— Boiss. i^/. Or. ii. 738.— Hiern. i^/. 

 Trop, Afr. ii. 465. — Haev. and Sond. Fl. Cap. 

 ii. 516.— C. Gay, Fl. Chil. ii. 368.— A. Guay, 

 Man. ed. 5, 183.— Fr. et Sav. Jap. 167.— B-t. 

 May. t. 1003, 1812.— Walp. Hep. ii. 103; v. 

 674 ; Ami. ii. 539 ; iv. 688. 



