Peplis.] LYTHEACE^. 179 



by Smith, very commonly 4 or 5 times that number, their colour too varying from 

 a rich crimson to pale rose-red or even white, the whorls being also often dimidi- 

 ate, and the flowers few or subsolitary in the axils of the lowest bracts or rather 

 floral leaves. Calyx cylindrical, very hairy, 12-ribbed and 12-toothed (sometimes 

 in the same spike lO-toothed and decandrous) ; 6 of the teeth long, subulate and 

 exterior to the short, broadly ovato-triangular, intermediate ones, that are conni- 

 vent in the bud, the longer always erect. Petals 6, inserted on the tube of the 

 calyx, opposite to and nearly at the base of its longer segments (or accessory pro- 

 cesses) where the texture is a little glandulose, oblongo-elliptical, entire, with pur- 

 ple veins, thin, weak and rumpled. Stamens 12 (sometimes but 10 in other flowers 

 of the same whorl), inserted at the base of the calyx in a single row, alternately 

 unequal in length, often bright red, the longer ones much exserted ; anthers either 

 green or yellow, their pollen similarly coloured, those on the long filaments more 

 commonly tgreen, as are frequently those of the shorter, at other times all the 

 anthers are bright yellow. Ovarium conical, with a deep lateral furrow. Style 

 cylindrical, often purple, bent to one side, sometimes included, at other times con- 

 siderably exserted ; stigma peltate, rough with glandular points, greenish yellow. 

 Capsules brown, small, ovate or oblong, thin and membranous, quite included 

 in the calyx, 2-valved, the valves often cloven. Seeds numerous, brownish white, 

 pyriform, bluntly angular, somewhat shining and wrinkled. 



II. Peplis, Linn. Water Purslane. 



" Calyx campanulate, with 6 large and 6 alternating small teeth. 

 Petals 6, often wanting. Stamens 6. Style very short. Capsule 

 2 -celled."— 5r. Fl. 



Small, prostrate, smooth and somewhat succulent plants, closely resembling 

 Lythrum in structure, but very different in appearance, inhabiting watery places. 



1. P. Portula, L. Water Purslarie* " Flowers axillary soli- 

 tary, leaves obovate."— i?r. Fl. p. 140. E. B. t. 1211. 



Common in wet boggy situations, watery ditches, and on the half-dried-up 

 margins of pools and plashes. Ft. July, August. 0. 



E. Med. — By the pond at Ninham farm, near Eyde. At the Dripping well 

 on St. George's Down. Abundant in ditches on the moors to the North of Gods- 

 hill. Moist spots on Bleak Down, plentiful. Boggy ground at Lake common, 

 near Sandown. On Stapler's heath, by Newport. 



W. Med. — Ditches at Freshwater gate. Abundant in some ditches by the 

 Medina, between Rookley and North-Ground farms, and in the black peat-bog 

 about Cridmore, &c. 



Root a bundle of pale slender fibres. Stems matted, a few inches in length, 

 floating or prostrate and creeping on the halt-dried soil, mostly reddish, brittle, 

 alternately branched, very bluntly quadrangular, inwardly divided into 4 tubular 

 cavities by a central medullary chord, connected with the circumference by as 

 many partitions of cellular tissue, interrupted only at each pair of leaves by a node 

 or joint, from which fresh fibres are mostly emitted and [again take root. Leaves 

 opposite, a few here and there somewhat alternate, scarcely above i an inch m 

 length, roundly obovate, attenuated into the flat petiole, bright green or reddish, 

 very smooth and shining, entire or slightly emarginate, the higher ones mostly 

 recurved. Stipules none. Flowers minute, solitary and axillary, neariy sessile at 

 first, when in seed very shortly pedunculate, with a pair of subulate bracts from 

 near the middle of each flowerstalk almost as long as the calyx. Calyx pmkish, 

 subcampanulate, broad and shallow, oblongo-quadraugular, plaited, with 12 pur- 

 plish ribs and as many alternately larger and smaller terminalteelh-like processes, 



* This genus must he carefully distinguished from the true Purslane— Poi(w- 

 laca, which is not of British origin, a distinction which has not been attended to 

 either by Smith or Hooker. 



