URTICACER. 125 
ORDER LXXI—URTICACE &. 
Herbs, shrubs, or trees, with alternate or opposite, generally 
scabrous or hairy, leaves, the hairs sometimes stinging. Stipules 
more or less conspicuous, usually deciduous in the arborescent genera, 
rarely wanting. Flowers variously disposed, usually dicecious or mone- 
cious, rarely perfect. Perianth single, commonly herbaceous, regular, 
free from the ovary. Stamens as many as the lobes of the calyx, 
more rarely fewer or more numerous, inserted in the bases of the calyx 
lobes and opposite to them. Ovary free from the calyx, 1-celled, rarely 
2-celled; ovules 1 in each cell of the ovary, anatropous or amphy- 
tropous, pendulous or suspended; style single or 2 when the ovary 
is 2-celled. Fruit a 1-seeded achenium or samara. Seed solitary, 
with or without albumen. 
Suz-Orper I.—URTICEZ. 
Flowers monecious or diccious or polygonous, not arranged on 
a fleshy clinanth nor spadix. Filaments transversely wrinkled and 
incurved in bud, spreading with elasticity when the pollen is ready 
to be shed. Ovary 1-celled, with a single suspended orthotropous 
ovule; style or stigma 1, simple. Fruit an achene; embryo straight, 
in the axis of albumen; radicle remote from the hilum. 
GENUS Il—PARIETARIA. Tournef. 
Flowers polygamous. Perfect flowers with the perianth, 4- or 
5-partite, the segments nearly equal: stamens as many as the segments 
of the perianth; ovary free; style very short; stigma multifid. Uni- 
sexual flowers differing from the perfect ones only by the ovary being 
abortive in the male flowers, or the stamens abortive in the female 
flowers. Achene enclosed in the tube of the perianth, which often 
elongates after flowering. 
Herbs or undershrubs with the leaves alternate or opposite. Flowers 
axillary, in cymose-fasciculate sessile clusters, contained in a 2-leaved 
involucre, each half of which is multipartite, and consists of the bracts 
of half of a contracted cyme; between the 2 halves of the involucre 
there is a flower, which is usually female. Plants glabrous or hairy, 
but the hairs are never stinging. 
The name of this genus of plants is derived from the word paries, a wall, because it 
grows on old walls. 
