FLAX 
Description of Several colour varieties of A. rosea are here shown, 
Piate oi. about half the natural size. The leaves figured are 
only the small ones from near the summit of the flowering sterna 
Fig. 1 is the staminal tube, removed from the flower, the stigmas showing 
above it. Fig. 2 is a single seed, and Fig. 3 a seedling. 
Among other plants of the Order Malvaceae grown in gardens, brief 
reference may be made to the genus Gallirhoe, of which several members 
admit of easy cultivation in rich sandy loam. G. pedata, an erect, 
branching annual with pedately-lobed leaves, and flowers 3 inches across, 
cherry-colour with white centre, appearing in August. G. involuerata 
is of more straggling habit, with lobed heart-shaped leaves, and light- 
centred purple flowers, 2 inches in diameter; a summer-blooming 
perennial. 
FLAX 
Natural Order Line.®. Genus Linum 
Linum (Greek, linon, flax, thread, fishing-line, etc.; such articles 
being made from the fibres of these plants). A genus of about eighty 
species of herbs or small shrubs, characterised by their narrow, entire, 
usually alternate leaves, and five-parted flowera The sepals are quite 
entire; the petals distinct or joined below, falling away early. Ovary 
five-celled, styles five. The species are distributed over the temperate 
and warm regions of the earth. 
The story of the cultivation of Linum is so exceedingly 
HiSt0r7 ’ ancient that no one knows its beginning. Linen cloth, 
flax threads, and the stone spindles for spinning it are found in the 
Swiss Lake-Dwellings of the Stone Age, where there is no sign of the use 
of cereals having yet commenced. The cloth used by the Egyptians at a 
very early period for embalming their dead was of coarse linen, and the 
word linon was used by the Greeks for a number of articles, including 
sails and fishing-nets, which were evidently woven from flax-fibres. 
And yet, we believe, Linum usitatissimum, which has been so long 
cultivated to provide flax, is not known to occur truly wild anywhere. 
Three species are natives of Britain— L. catharticum, L. perenne, and 
L. angustifolium ; other species occasionally found in gardens, or deserv¬ 
ing a place there, are of comparatively recent introduction. L. alpinum 
was brought from Austria in 1739, L. arboreum from Crete in 1788, 
L. flavum from Austria in 1793; but L. grand/iflorum, the only one 
i-—*7 
