56 THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS. 



Monocotyledons need not detain us long. Their 

 colouration is as a whole both less complicated and 

 less instructive. As a rule, sepals and petals are here 

 petaloid and often indistinguishable. 



The AlismacecE answer very closely to the Ranun- 

 culacece as being in all probability the earliest sur- 

 viving type of entomophilous Monocotyledons. Their 

 arrangement is of course trinary, but they have 

 similarly separate carpels, often numerous, surrounded 

 by one, two, three, or many rows of stamens, and 

 then by one row of three petals and one row of three 

 sepals. All our English species, however, are white 

 or rosy, instead of yellow. As they are marsh plants, 

 they seem, to have reached or passed the stage of 

 Ranunculus aquatilis. One species, A lisma plantago, 

 the water-plantain, however, still retains a yellow 

 claw to the petals, though the limb is white or pale 

 pink. So also does Damasonium stellatum. These 

 two interesting plants present a remarkable analogy 

 to the water-crowfoot. 



Among monocotyledonous families with a united 

 ovary, the Liliacece are probably the most primitive. 

 Their simplest type in England is Gagea lutea (Fig. 20), 

 a yellow lily looking extremely like a bunch of Ranun- 

 culus Ficaria. In Lloydia serotina, a closely allied 

 but more developed form, the petals are white, with 

 a yellow base, and three reddish lines. The wild 

 tulip is likewise yellow. A Ilium ursinum, a some- 

 what higher type, is pure white. The fritillary 

 (Fritillaria Meleagris], a large, handsome, bell-shaped 

 flower, with separate petals converging into a campanu- 

 late form, and with a nectariferous cavity at their base 

 (Fig. 21), is purple or red, chequered with lurid marks ; 



