SUPPLEMENT. 
THE FAMILIES OF FLOWERING PLANTS. 
By Cuar.es Lovurs Poizarp. 
CHAPTER XXI—Continued. 
We have now reached one of the largest, probably the most impor- 
tant, and certainly one of the most distinct natural groups in the whole 
vegetable kingdom; the group known for many years under the name 
Leguminosae or Pulse Family, and still commonly so called. The 
name is in allusion to the fruit, which consists of a single more or less 
fleshy thin-walled carpel, bearing the seeds in one row. It is known 
technically as a legume, and popularly as a pod, and is so characteris- 
tic in appearance, that with very few exceptions any plant of this group 
may be recognized, when in fruit, as a “leguminous” (legume-bearing) 
plant. 
Recent systematists, considering the remarkable | differences in 
floral structure that obtain among various subdivisions of the Legumi- 
nogae, have treated the group as consisting of three families, and this 
classificatiod is generally followed in America. These families are 
known as the Mimosaceae, the Caesalpiniaceae, and the Papilionaceae. 
Family Mimosaceae. .Sensitive-plant Family. Mimosa Family. A 
group conspicuous in the tropics, very limited in the temperate, and 
wholly absent from the arctic zones. It includes about 30 genera and 
1400 species, the plants being herbs, shrubs or trees. They have alter- 
nate leaves, which are nearly always pinnately compound after the pat- 
tern of those in the common greenhouse sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica). 
The small perfect and quite regular flowers are borne in heads, spikes 
or racemes. The calyx is cup-shaped, with from three to six teeth; the 
corolla with a similar number of distinct or slightly united petals. The 
stamens vary greatly in number in the different genera, some of them 
being distinguishable from each other as genera only by the number of 
stamens. The ovary is of course one-celled, and the fruit a legume, as 
above explained. Fig. 116 conveys a good idea of the flowering branch 
of an Acacia, which is a typical mimosaceous plant. 
Edible fruits are yielded by many tropical trees of this group, par- 
ticularly by species of Inga and Prosopis. The latter is the well-known 
