IRIDACEyE. (iRIS FAMILY.) 515 



3. ALETRIS, L. Colic-root. Star-grass 



Perianth cylindrical, not woolly, but wrinkled and roughened outside by 

 thickly-set points, which look like scurfy mealiness, the tube cohering below 

 with the base only of the ovary, 6-cleft at the summit. Stamens G, inserted at 

 the base of the lobes: filaments and anthers short, included. Style awl -shaped, 

 3-cleft at the apex : stigmas minutely 2-lobed. Pod ovate, enclosed in the 

 roughened perianth ; the dehiscence, seeds, &c. nearly as iu Lophiola. — Peren- 

 nial and smooth stemless herbs, very bitter, with fibrous roots, and a spreading 

 cluster of thin and flat lanceolate leaves ; the small flowers in a wand-like spiked 

 raceme, terminating a naked slender scape (2°-3° high). Bracts awl-shaped, 

 minute. ('A/Wi-pi'?, a female slave who grinds corn ; the name applied to these 

 plants iu allusion to the apparent mealiness dusted over the blossoms.) 



1. A. farindsa, L. Flowers oblong-tubular, white; lobes lanceolate-ob- 

 long. — Grassy or sandy woods : not rare. July, Aug. 



2. A. atirea, Walt. Flowers bell-shaped, yellow (fewer and shorter); lobes AM- 

 short-ovate. — Barrens, New Jersey to Virginia, and southward. July. 



Order 117. BROMELIACEiE. (Pine- Apple Family.) 



Herbs (or scarcely woody plants, nearly all tropical), the greater part epi- 

 phytes, with persistent dry or fleshy and channelled crowded leaves, sheath- 

 ing at the base, usually covered with scurf: 6-androus ; the 6-eleft perianth 

 adherent to the ovary in the Pine-apple, &c, or free from it in 



1. TILLANDSIA, L. Long Moss. 



Perianth plainly double, 6-parted ; the 3 outer divisions (sepals) membrana- 

 ceous; the 3 inner (petals) colored; all convolute below into a tube, spreading 

 above, lanceolate. Stamens 6, hypogynous ! or the alternate ones cohering with 

 the base of the petals : anthers introrse. Ovary free : style thread-shaped : stig- 

 mas 3. Pod cartilaginous, 3-celled, loculicidally 3-valved ; the valves splitting 

 into an inner and an outer layer. Seeds several or many in each cell, anatro- 

 pous, club-shaped, pointed, raised on a long hairy-tufted stalk, like a coma. 

 Embryo small, at the base of copious albumen. — Scurfy-leaved epiphytes. 

 (Named for Prof. Tillands of Abo.) 



1. T. usneoides, L. (Common Long Moss or Black Moss.) Stems 

 thread-shaped, branching, pendulous ; leaves thread-shaped; peduncle short, 1- 

 flowered. — Dismal Swamp, Virginia, and southward ; growing on the branches 

 of trees, forming long hanging tufts. A characteristic plant of the Southern 

 States, and barely coming within the limits of this work. 



Order 118. IRIDACEJE. (Iris Family.) 



Herbs, with equitant 1-ranled leaves, and regular or irregular perfect 

 flowers; the divisions of the 6-clefl petal-like perianth convolute in the bud 

 in 2 sets, the tube coherent with the 3-celled ovary, and 3 distinct or mona- 

 delphous stamens, alternate with the inner divisions of the perianth and 



