118 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
ORDER LXIX.—_CALLITRICHACES. 
Small slightly branched herbs, growing in water or on mud. Stems 
slender, brittle, rooting at the nodes. Leaves opposite, slightly connate, 
entire or rarely lobed, generally notched at the apex. Flowers mone- 
cious or rarely perfect, sessile, axillary, solitary, very minute, usually 
bractiate, but the bracts sometimes caducous. Perianth none. Stamens 
in the male flowers 1; filament elongate ; anther 2-celled. Female 
flowers with a 4-lobed ovary; styles 2, filiform, stigmatiferous through- 
out. Fruit sessile or stalked, suborbicular, much compressed, 4-lobed 
and 4-celled, the lobes in pairs, with an impressed line on each face 
indicating the separation between the two pairs, each pair with a more 
or less deep furrow between the 2 lobes of which the pair is com- 
posed, at length usually splitting into 4 indehiscent cocca. Seeds 
4, 1 in each cell of the fruit, pendulous, with a small caruncule at the 
apex; albumen fleshy; embryo central, straight. 
In some of the species flowers with stamens and pistil together 
have been found, so that its position next Euphorbiacew is perhaps 
unnatural. 
GENUS I—-CALLITRICHE. Linn. 
The only known genus of the order. 
The name of this genus of plants is derived from two Greek words, cadé¢ (/:alos), 
beautiful, and Opié (thrix), the hair. 
SPECIESI—CALLITRICHE VERNA. Lin. 
Prares MCCLXXI. to MCCLXXIV. 
Leaves linear or oblanceolate or obovate, none of them enlarged at 
the base, more or less notched at the apex, otherwise entire. Anthers 
rising out of the water immediately before fertilisation takes place; 
pollen grains with 2 coats. Marginal furrows of the fruit shallow, not 
extending nearly to the bottom of the lobes. Stem and leaves furnished 
with stellate scales. Submerged leaves commonly translucent and 
1-nerved, the upper ones generally floating and in a rosette; those 
exposed to the air opaque, furnished with stomata, and often 3-nerved. 
