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26 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
with iron and guarded with soldiers.” Under the curious names of “ Fat Hen,” and 
“Good King Henry,” this plant was formerly largely cultivated in gardens as a 
potherb, and even in the beginning of the present ceutury was highly esteemed in 
Lincolnshire and some of the midland counties, but is now but little used. It forms 
a very palatable and wholesome green vegetable when boiled, and much resembles 
spinach in flavour; the young shoots may be boiled and eaten like asparagus, or put 
in broths and stews. The whole plant is slightly purgative, but not sufficiently so to 
be valuable as a medicine. It is easily cultivated, and the crop of green leaves it 
furnishes during the greater part of the year, was doubtless very welcome before the 
numerous vagetables now grown in kitchen gardens were introduced. 
Trize IV._SPINACIEZ. 
Flowers monecious or polygamous; the female flowers with the 
perianth 2-valved, and dissimilar to that of the male or perfect flowers. 
Seed generally with copious albumen ; embryo peripherical. 
Stem continuous. Leaves flat. 
GENUS VI.—A TRIPLEX. Tournef. 
Flowers monecious or polygamous. Male or perfect flowers with 
the calyx of 3 to 5 sepals, slightly united at the base: stamens 3 to 
5: fruit none, or depressed and containing a horizontal lenticular seed. 
Female flowers with the perianth compressed, bivalve of 2 free or 
more or less united sepals: stamens none: styles 2, united at the 
base: seed vertical) lenticular, with a crustaceous or membranous 
testa. 
Herbs with opposite hastate triangular or rhomboidal leaves, often 
sprinkled with whitish meal. Flowers in clusters arranged in ter- 
minal spikes, often combined into panicles. 
The name of this genus of plants is said to be derived from a (a) privative, and 
Tpépw (trepho) I nourish. 
Section IL—TEUTLIOPSIS. Dumort. 
Flowers monecious. Female flowers with 2 valve-like sepals, joined 
only at the base. Pericarp membranous, free from the perianth. Testa 
crustaceous; radicle basal or sublateral. 
SPECIESL—A TRIPLEX LITTORALIS. “Lin.” Wail. 
Prares MCC. MCCI. 
Annual. ‘Stem herbaceous, erect, branched; the branches ascend- 
ing or curved upwards, and erect at the apex. Leaves alternate or 
