16 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



common species. Leaves deep fjreen, generally concolorous in the 

 British plant, but sometimes marked ■with black blotches. 



Mr. F. To\vnsend, who kindly sent me a fine series of fresh speci- 

 mens from the Isle of Wight, tells me that there the leaves of A. Itali- 

 cum have their basal lobes as often parallel as spreading, and that they 

 are quite as liable to be spotted as those of A. niaculatum, but that he 

 never saw the spots of the former with a jagged outline, which often 

 occurs in A. maculatum. He has never seen the veins white. 



Seven or eight years ago, I received living jilants of this from its 

 discoverer, Mr. A. Hambrough, and have cultivated these ever since. 

 The plant grows much more luxuriantly and flowers more fi-eely with 

 me in London than A. maculatum does. 



I have also cultivated the true A. Italicum, brought me from 

 Monaco by Mr. G. B. Robertson. Some of these have the leaves veined 

 with white, and others have them concolorous. The leaves have the 

 basal lobes much less bent upwards than in the Isle of Wight plant, 

 and their outline is more triangular, but in every other respect — time 

 of appearance of the leaves and of flowering, shape of the spa the, 

 essential organs, and barren pistils — the two are undistinguishable. 



Italian Cuckoo-pint. 



French, Goiiet d'ltalie. 



ORDER LXXVL— L E M N A C E ^. 



Small floating submersed herbs, without an ordinary stem or leaves, 

 but consisting of minute leaf-like fronds (internodes of the stem), from 

 the edges of which other and smaller fronds are often produced, 

 sinking to the bottom of the water in mnter, where the minute buds 

 of the fronds persist until the succeeding spring, when they rise to the 

 surface, the old ones decaying annually. Flowers produced from the 

 edges or rarely from the upper surface of the frond (very rarely 

 observed in some of the species), enclosed in a minute bract or spathe. 

 Male flowers 1 or 2, reduced to a single naked stamen, with a filiform 

 filament and a 2-celled anther. Female flower solitary, included in 

 the spathe \nth. the 1 or 2 male flowers, reduced to a single naked 

 1 -celled ovary; ovules 1 to 4, or rarely more, inserted at the bottom 

 of the cell; style short; stigma truncate, depressed. Fruit a mem- 

 branous utricle, indehiscent. Seeds 1 to 4 ; albumen none. 



GENUS /.— LEMNA. Linn. 

 The only genus of the order. 



The origin of the name of this genus of plants is supposed to be the Greek word 

 XcTTic, a scale ; but it is somewhat doubtful as to the meaning of the word. 



