Tamua.] dioscoreace^. 605 



/3. Flowers white. 



In groves, thickets, copses, and on liedgehanks, as also in open grassy places, 

 damp pastures and meadows ; in the greatest abundance. Fl. April, May. Fr. 

 July. 2;. 



|3. In Quarr copse, St. John's wood, and elsewheie about Ryde, occasionally a 

 plant or two here and there. Great-wood copse, and nut unfiequent in other 

 places near Shanklin. 



Plant quite glabrous. Bulb lying deep in the ground, roundish ovoid or glo- 

 bose, white, with a pale yellowish external coat ; filled with a copious clammy 

 bland mucilage. Leaves several, shorter than the scape, from about 4 or 6 to 9 or 

 10 lines in breadth, at first erect, but during and after flowering spreading flat on 

 the ground, or lax and drooping at their extremities, linear, bright green on both 

 sides, smooth, shining and succulent, caniculate, bluntly keeled, obtuse and 

 rounded or more or less painted, but scarcely acute, thickened a little at the tips, 

 tapering below into long, blanched, semicylindrical, hollow, subterraneous bases. 

 Scape erect, rounded, solid, brittle, full of a clammy juice, angular from the 

 lowermost flower upwards. Flowers cernuous, in a terminal secund raceme from 

 3 or 4 to 6 or 8 inches long and nodding at the top ; the lower ones remote, the 

 higher crowded, varying in shade from a deep to a pale purplish blue, sometimes 

 white or flesh-coloured. Periantk about f ths of an inch long, including the revo- 

 lute tips of the segments, campanulato-cylindrical or tubuloso-campanulale, a lit- 

 tle ventricose at the base, to which it is divided into 6 linear, oblong, bluntish 

 segments, with a darker-coloured dorsal nerve, channelled, spreading and revo- 

 lute at their tips, but more unequal in form, size and disposition than in any true 

 Scilla or Hyacintbus, between which this species makes a transition in structure 

 and habit. Pedicels rounded or subangulate, coloured, each with a basal pair of 

 very unequal bracts, the larger of which, subtending the footstalk, is lanceolate 

 and usually longer than the pedicel ; the smaller linear, placed laterally and much 

 shorter than the other; both coloured. Stamens unequal, the 3 alternate ones 

 longest, about equal to the tubular part of the perianth ; filaments, — the longer 

 ones adnate with the segments for the greater part of their length, the shorter ones 

 free nearly throughout; anthers yellowish or whitish, of two linear, parallel, erect 

 lobes, bursting anteriorly. Germen ovoid, 6-lobed, without pores at the base, 

 tapering into the coloured hexagonal style ; stigma a 3-lobed tuft of crystalline 

 points like bristles. Capsule erect, on the much elongated pedicels. 



Order LXXVI. DIOSCOEEACE^, B. Br. 



" Dioecious. Limb of the perianth with 6 divisions. Sterile 

 flowers : — Stamens 6 from the base of the perianth. — Fertile 

 flowers : — Ovary 3-celled ; cells 1 — 2 seeded. Style deeply trifid. 

 Stigmas undivided. Fruit dry and flat, with 2 of its cells fre- 

 quently abortive, or (in Tamus) baccate. Embryo small near the 

 hilum, lying in a large cavity of cartilaginous albumen. — Mostly 

 twining and tropical shrubs. Leaves with reticulated veins. 

 Flowers small, bracteated." — Br. Fl. 



I. Tamus, Linn. Bryony. 



Dioecious. Stam.fls.: — Permrai/i bell-shaped, 6-parted. Sta- 

 mens 6. Style rudimentary. — Pist. fls. : — Perianth bell-shaped, 

 contracted above the inferior and adnate ovary. Stamens 6, abor- 

 tive. Berry (imperfectly) 3-celled. Seeds one or more in each 

 cell, globose, without a border. 



8 T 



