POTATO FAMILY. Solanaceae. 



There are many kinds of Nicotiana, or Tobacco, chiefly 

 American; acrid, narcotic herbs or shrubs, usually sticky- 

 hairy; leaves large, toothless; corolla funnel-form or salver- 

 form, with a long tube and spreading border, plaited in the 

 bud; stamens with threadlike filaments and broad anthers, 

 not protruding; capsule smooth, containing numerous 

 small seeds. The name is in honor of Nicot, diplomat and 

 author of the first French dictionary, who sent some of 

 these plants to Catherine de' Medici from Portugal in 1560. 



A very slender, loosoly-branching ever- 

 San Juan Tree, ' 



Tree Tobacco green shrub, from six to fifteen feet high, 



Nicoii&na glaiica with graceful, swaying branches and 

 Yellow smooth, thick leaves, with a "bloom," 



Spring t | ie j ower leaves eight inches long. The 



Southwest . 



flowers are nearly two inches long, green- 

 ish at first and then becoming a rather pretty shade of 

 warm dull-yellow, and hang in graceful clusters from the 

 ends of the branches. The calyx is unequally five-toothed, 

 the tube of the corolla downy on the outside; the anthers 

 whitish; the ovary on a yellowish disk, with a long style 

 and two-lobed stigma, and the capsu.e oblong, half an 

 inch long. This was introduced into California from South 

 America about fifty years ago and is now common in waste 

 places and cultivated valleys. 



There are many kinds of Lycium, shrubs or woody 

 vines, named for the country Lycia. 



An odd-looking desert shrub, everything 

 Matrimony about it so closely crowded as to give a 



L'cium Cboperi queer bunchy and clumsy effect. It is 

 White three or four feet high, with thick, dark 



gray, gnarled, woody branches, crowded 

 with tufts of small, dull, light green leaves, 

 which are thickish, stiffish, obscurely downy and toothless, 

 and mingled with close little bunches of flowers. The 

 flowers are about half an inch long, with a large, yellowish, 

 hairy calyx, with five lobes, a white corolla, which is 

 slightly hairy outside, with five lobes and a narrow, green- 

 ish tube, and pale yellow anthers, not protruding. They 

 are rather pretty near by, but the appearance of the whole 

 shrub is too pale to be effective. The familiar Matrimony 

 Vine of old-fashioned gardens belongs to this genus. 



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