FUMARIAGE^-FUMITORY FAMILY 



Delicate smooth herbs with watery juice, compound dissected 

 leaves, and irregular flowers. The two sepals are small and scale- 

 like. The corolla consists of four petals in two pairs; the outer 

 with spreading tips, and one or both of them spurred or saccate 

 at the base; the inner pair narrower and their callous-crested 

 tips united over the stigma. The stamens are in two sets of three 

 each, placed opposite the larger petals; their filaments often 

 imited; the middle anther of each set two-celled, the lateral ones 

 one-celled. Pod one-celled, one or several-seeded. Several na- 

 tive species are in cultivation, but the best-known garden repre- 

 sentative of the family is Bleeding Heart, an Asiatic species. 



BLEEDING HEART 



Dicentra specidbilis. 



Dicentra, Greek from dis, and kentron, two-spurred; originally 

 misprinted Dicl^Jra and then supposed to be Dielytra. 



An ornamental spring-blooming perennial, native to Japan, northern 

 China, and Siberia; sent into England in 1846 by Robert Fortune. 



Slem. — One to two feet high, branching. 



Leaves. — Compound in threes, divisions rather broad, suggesting 

 peony leaves. 



Flowers. — Irregular, heart-shaped, rose-colored, borne in simple, 

 secund, drooping racemes, four to eight inches long. 



Calyx. — Reduced to two small scales, often disappearing. 



Corolla. — Cordate at base, four-petalled; petals in two pairs, conni- 

 vent, slightly coherent; outer pair rose-colored with flaring tips; inner 

 pair protruding, white, spoon-shaped, winged at the back and easily 

 breaking into two parts, closing over the anthers and stigma at the apex 

 of the flower. 



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