0579 



TRUMPETBUSH 



Family: BlGNONIACEAE. 



Reproductive system: DlDYNAMY, ANGlOSPERMY. 



Botanists generally advance the field of science that they study, and society only 

 appreciates them in this regard. Yet it derives an immediate, special, and unmistakable 

 benefit from the abundance and variety of plants from abroad that have been acclimatized 

 in our gardens and parks for a number of years. For about a hundred years the 

 trumpetbush, Bignonia radicans, LINN., or trumpet creeper, was known in Europe only 

 from descriptions of occasional travelers. Nowadays it covers the walls of our dwellings. 

 Every year it blooms and often yields fruit as it does in its native land. The stems that 

 climb like ivy grow as high as thirty or forty feet. They're smooth and branchy. The 

 leaves are opposite, pinnate, and consist of seven, nine, or eleven oval pointed serrate 

 leaflets that have a beautiful green color. The scarlet flowers are very large and are set in 

 very short bunches at the ends of the branches. The calyx is a single cup-shaped unit with 

 five teeth at its top. The monopetalous corolla is a long tube that's wide open at the top 

 and terminates in five lobes of unequal size. The four stamens are inserted near the base 

 of the corolla where the rudiment of a fifth stamen can be seen. The ovary is free. It's 

 surmounted by a long style and terminates in a stigma with two lobes. The fruit is a 

 capsule shaped like a long cylindrical siliqua with two valves and a partition opposite 

 them. It contains a number of seeds with membranous edges. 



