FLOWERING PLANTS OF THE GREEN LANES. 24 1 



elegantly cleft and complicately indented. It flowers 

 more or less all the summer through, and if you 

 obtain a plant bearing a seed vessel, you cannot fail 

 to notice what a comical resemblance it possesses to 

 the head and beak of the stork. 



In no group of plants, perhaps, does the young 

 botanist find so much difficulty as with those termed 

 "umbelliferous." They are in flower the summer 

 through, and their number is legion. The above 

 name is derived from the manner in which each 

 flower-stalks springs, from different levels to the 

 same surface, like the whalebone ribs of an um- 

 brella supporting the silk. As a rule, you find 

 these flower-stalks, with their branches, as well as 

 the petals of each flower, multiples of each other. 

 Indeed, it is most singular how the law of numbers 

 is seen in the vegetable world. It is nearly always 

 constant in the stamens, petals, and sepals of the 

 majority of plants. Unfortunately the umbelli- 

 ferous (umbrella-like) plants bear flowers, generally 

 whiteish, or some shade of yellow, very much like 

 each other. The student must carefully study their 

 leaves, which are exceedingly various, as well as the 

 seed-vessels. These facts, and the time of flowering, 

 smell, habitat, &c., will generally lead him right. 

 Almost the first to appear of this great group is 

 the Earth-nut (Bunium flexuosum) the identical 

 plant which Shakespeare's Caliban offered to dig for 

 the sake of its " nuts." The latter are a granulous, 

 tuber-like portion of the roots, and are far from 



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