Triglochin.] thiglochinace^. 523 



W. Med. — In one of the mavsh-ditohes at Freshwater gate, in small quantity, 

 Rm. C.Pritchard, J u\y llth, 1842!!! 



Plant perfectly glabrous. Root creeping extensively, emitting^ leaves, as it 

 appears to me, in a sort of douhle row, together with copious long white fibres, 

 from the fleshy and almost bulbous origin of the former. Leaves all radical, 

 shorter than the stem, erect, bright pale green, linear, acutely triquetrous, more or 

 less .spirally twisted, especially at their acute withered tips, sheathing the stem 

 with iheir broad, hollow, ribbed bases, internally filled with a loose spongy tissue 

 of tubular cells, divided by transverse partitions or septa. Stem erect, 2 — 4 feet 

 high, round, tapering, filled with cellular tissue, and nearly as thick as the little 

 finger at the bottom. Umbel solitary, terminal, many-flowered, subtended by an 

 involucre of 3 lanceolate, ribbed, membranous and withered, taper-pointed leaf- 

 lets, not above an inch in length. Peduncles single-flowered, 3 or 4 inches long, 

 rounded, mostly tinged with rose-colour at the base and near the summit, with a 

 sheathing scariose bract, shaped like the involucral leaves, at the foot of each. 

 Flowers about an inch across, expanding in long succession, very handsome. 

 Perianth in 6 ovate, concave, spreading, nearly equal segments, veined, whitish, 

 suffused and streaked with a delicate peach-blossom red, deep rose-colour at the 

 back, with a tinge of umber at the base, their edges minutely notched or crenu- 

 late. Stamens 9, inserted at the base of the ovaries, two opposite to each of the 

 three outer, and one opposite the three inner, segments,* at first erect, finally 

 spreading, incurved and recumbent on the perianth ; filaments rose-coloured, 

 tapering, a little compressed ; anthers duU red, linear-oblong, apiculate, bursting 

 laterally, and when discharging their bright orange-yellow pollen contracted to an 

 orbicular shape. Germens 6, rose-coloured, ovate, compressed, tapering into the 

 beak-like styles, which are tipped with the bifid decurrent stigmas, the lobes of 

 which, at first conjoined, are afterwards spread open and a little reflexed. Capsules 

 ovate, 1-celled. Seeds very numerous and minute, covering the entire inner walls 

 of the capsule. 



The leaves of this plant, from their weak spongy texture, are quite incapable of 

 cutting with their angles, which, however acute, are neither cartilaginous nor ser- 

 rated ; hence the generic name becomes very inappropriate, and suggests the pro- 

 bability that a totally diflerent plant was so designated by the ancients ; perhaps 

 the really formidable Cladium or some of the larger Varices, which grow in simi- 

 lar places with our present Butomus. 



Order LXXXI. TEIGLOCHINACE^, Nob. 



"Flowers perfect, lower ones or all stalked or reflexed. Peri- 

 anth uniform, rarely none, sometimes coloured, but scarcely peta- 

 loid. Stamens hypogynous. Anthers turned outwards. Ovaries 

 superior, united or distinct. Ovules solitary or two, approxirnated 

 at the base, erect. Styles or stigmas 3 — 6. Pericarps indehiscent 

 or 2-valved. Embryo without (or ? very rarely in the axis of 

 the mealy) albumen, having the same direction as the seed, with a 

 lateral cleft for the emission of the plumule. — Marsh herbs, ivith 

 narrow radical leaves. Flowers spiked or racemed." — Br. Fl.j: 



* Tn other words, the stamens are in two whorls of six and three respectively, 

 the latter being more interior or completely hypogynous than the former or 

 exterior set. 



t [The characters of the natural family quoted above are those ot J uncagi- 

 uacea; " in the ' British Flora' from which work they are quoted. Our lamented 



