VA LERIANA CEM, 



50 



perennical or shrubby plants of very various habit, erect or nearly 

 stemless, stubby, with entire rosetted leaves, sometimes resembling 

 those of the Andean Saxifrages, &c. The stems, moreover, are 

 sarmentose, climbing, with dentate or dissected leaves. This is the 

 case especially in those named Astrejjhia, in which also the two sterile 

 ovarian cells are often tolerably large and finally open widely outwards. 



Plectritis, annuals from the same regions, has also triandrous 

 flowers and a small collar or calycinal cupule at the top of the ovary ; 

 but the corolla tube is prolonged anteriorly at the base to a rather 

 long narrow spur. The sterile cells of the fruit are nerviform or 

 project in involute wings. The leaves are entire or dentate -sinuate, 

 and the contracted cymes are in a spikelike mass on a common axis. 



In Fedia (fig. 402, 403) the corolla limb is more irregular than in 

 the preceding genera. It is 



nearly bilabiate, and the tube ^edia cornucopioe, 



bears anteriorly near the base 

 an elliptic glandular plate, 

 little prominent. The calyx 

 is very irregular, short and 

 with four or five very unequal 

 lobes. There are only two 

 stamens and these correspond 

 to the two posterior of Patru 

 nia and Valerianella. The 

 ovary has three cells, of which 



one only is fertile, and is surmounted by a style the stigmatiferous 

 extremity of which is divided into three very small branches. . The only 

 species known, F, Cornucopice, is an annual of the Mediterranean 

 region ; it has the habit of ValerianeUa and flowers in uniparous cymes 

 the axes of which become thick and hard at the period of fructification. 



The Valerians (fig. 896, 404-408) differ from the preceding genera 

 chiefly by a sort of plume around the margin of the receptacle and, 

 consequently, of the fruit, generally described as a calyx the elements 

 of which are subdivided in strips. It is very short funnel-shaped and 

 in one piece soon divided into a variable number of subulate plumose 

 strips, at first closely involute, finally spread open and assisting the 

 dissemination of the ripe and dry fruit. The corolla is irregular, 

 more or less gibbous anteriorly at the base, with a limb of five 

 divisions (more rarely four or six), imbricate in the bud, and the 



Fig. 403. Corolla opened 

 and stamens (f). 



Fig. 402. Portion 

 of inflorescence. 



