PAPILTONACE^. 155 



or trees, with mostly compound leaves, small regular flowers, definite stamens, 

 inserted under a perigynous disk, quite free from the ovary, and no albumen 

 iu the seed. 



XXIV. THE PEAFLOWER TRIBE. PAPILIOiYACE^. 



(A Tribe of the Leguminous family, or Leguminoste.) 



Herbs, shrubs, or trees ; the leaves alternate (or, in a few 

 exotic genera, opposite),usually furnished with stipules, simple 

 or more frequently compound ; the leaflets either pinnately or 

 digitately arrange'd on their common stalk. Flowers in axil- 

 lary or terminal racemes or spikes, rarely solitary. Sepals 

 combined into a single calyx, more or less divided" into 5 or 

 fewer teeth or lobes. Corolla very irregular, consisting of .5 

 petals ; the upper one, called the standard, is outside of all in 

 the bud, and usually the broadest ; the two lateral ones, called 

 icings, are between the standard and the two lower ones, which 

 are inside of all, and united more or less by their outer edge 

 into a single one called the Tceel ; the claws of all live petals re- 

 maining free. Stamens 10, the filaments in the British species 

 either monadelphous, all united in a sheath round the ovary, or 

 diadelphoits, when the upper one is free and the other 9 united 

 in a sheath. Ovary single, 1-celled, with 1, 2, or more ovules 

 arranged along the inner or upper angle (the one next the 

 standard) of the cavity. Style simple. Fruit a pod, usually 

 opening in 2 valves. Seeds with 2 large cotyledons and no 

 albumen. 



A very numerous tribe, widely distributed over the whole surface of the 

 globe, and easily kno^^-n by the peeuhar form and arrangement of the petals, 

 constituting the well-known peaflower called by botanists papilionaceous, 

 comparing it, by a not very intelligible stretch of imagination, to a butterfly. 

 The whole family comprises two other tribes or suborders, chiefly tropical 

 or southern : the Casalpiinia tribe, represented in our plantations by the 

 Judas-tree (Cercis) and the Gleditsehia or, in our plant-houses, by Cassias, 

 BauMnias, and occasionally some others ; and the Mimosa tribe,' to which 

 belong the Sensitive-plant {Mimosa pvdica), the CaUiandras, and the nume- 

 rous Au^strahan Acacias of our plant-houses. The Leguminosce thus form, 

 after the Composites, the most extensive of all the Natural Orders of flower- 

 ing plants. 



•J f Leaves simple, or with 3 leaflets 2 



(.Leaves pinnate, with 2, i, or more leaflets '..'....'. 12 



rCalyx distinctly divided into two lips, either entire, or tjie upper one 2-tootiied 



~< and the lower one 3-toothed 3 



LCalyi with 5 distinct teeth, not arranged in two hps . . . . h 



3 f Calyr yellow, nearly as long as the petals, deeply divided into two . '. '. 1. FcBZE. 

 i Calyi short, not divided below the middle 4 



