BRITISH HERBAL 
GOLDER HMR RR eh 
si) 
POOPED LSSORGSEREIIESS 
CLAS S° XXIII. 
Plants whofe flower is formed of a fingle petal, divided deeply into four 
Jegments, and fucceeded. by two fecds 5 and whofe leaves are placed 
feveral together at every joint, and expanded like the rays of a frar. 
HIS is a clafs diftinguifhed with great certainty by Nature, and by very obvious characters. 
Mr. Ray has followed, as ufual, her fleps, and kept the plants diftin&t from all others, in a 
- peculiar clafs, under the name of herbe frellate, the ftellate plants: but they are blended 
among many others by the modern writers 5 they not admitting the difpofition of leaves, however fin- 
gular, into the number of claffical, or even generical diftinétions. 
The confequences of each method are obvious. In Mr. Ray thefe plants are kept together, and no 
others are mixed among them, or joined to them : in Linneus, and his followers, they are feparated 
into various claffes, and in each joined with plants the moft unlike that ftudous error could have 
chofen : cleavers is tanked with feabious among the fetrandria; and croffwor: is put ten claffes off, 
with pellitory of the wall and orach. 
This confirms, like the reft, the impropriety of that method. 
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Natives of BRITAIN. 
“-Thofe of which there is one or more fpecies naturally wild in this kingdom. 
Ginais, oN ocUeinsaege 
GeRO<S SuWe OgRurb- 
CRU CIaA Tae, 
rPHE flowers are of two kinds, male and hermaphrodite upon the fame plant. The hermaphro- 
dite flower ftands fingle on its ftalk: it is formed of one petal, and is divided at the top into 
four oval and fharp-pointed fezments. There is fearce any cup to this, but in its place a rudiment 
_ of the fruit, which afterwards ripens into a pair of feeds, covered with a tough fkin, and fo clofely 
joined, that they feem but one. The male flowers are placed upon the rudirnent of the other on 
each fide ; and each is formed ofa fingle petal, divided uncertainly into three or four fegments, which 
are oval and acute. This has a rudiment of a fruit underneath it, as the other; but it never ripens. 
Linnzeus places this among the polygamia monecia; the feveral flowers, though diftin& in fex, 
yet growing on the fame plant, and the impregnation of the feeds being by male and hermaphro- 
dite ones. 
Croffwort. 
