POLYGONAGE^-BUCKWHEAT FAMILY 



Herbs with alternate entire leaves, and stipules in the form of 

 sheaths above the swollen joints of the stem. The flowers are 

 mostly perfect, with a more or less persistent calyx. The calyx 

 is three to six cleft; corolla absent; stamens four to twelve in- 

 serted on the base of the calyx; ovary one-celled and bearing two 

 or three styles or stigmas. The fruit usually an akene, compressed, 

 angled, or winged. 



The family includes the Buckwheat of commerce, the familiar 

 Rhubarb, the Bushy Polygonums, and the Prince's Feather of the 

 garden, together with sundry and divers well-established weeds, 

 among them the Docks and the Smartweeds. 



BUSHY POLYGONUM 



Polygonum Sieboldi. Polygonum cuspidatum. 



An excellent representative of the perennial, bushy, high-growing 

 polygonums; effective for bold effects and desirable for the flowering 

 mass it produces in autumn. Appears in several hybrids. Japan. 



Polygonum sachalinense is a similar plant; more robust and likely 

 to become a pest from its power to spread. Also from Japan. 



5/ew.— Stout, handsome, bushy, three to five feet high; dying to the 

 ground in winter. 



Leaves. — Short-oval to broad-ovate, truncate or slightly cordate at 

 base, abruptly pointed, the strong side veinlets uniting in marginal 

 loops. Sheaths short and flaring, deciduous. 



Flowers. — Small, whitish in type, very numerous in slender-panicled 

 racemes in the axils of the leaves. 



Calyx. — White, four to five cleft. 



Corolla. — Wanting. 



Stamens. — Eight. 



Owry.— One-celled; style three-parted and fruit a triangular aken^ 

 surrounded by the white c&ljx.. 



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