528 Liliacee—A sparagus. 
25. ASPARAGUS. 
Erect or climbing herbs or shrubs with minute scale-like 
leaves and numerous very slendcr faseicled acicular branchlets 
sometimes spiny. Flowers axillary, small and inconspicuous, 
on jointed pedicels. Fruit baceate. The elegant plumose 
branches of the esculent Asparagus, A. officinalis, render 
this species almost indispensable in floral decorations, though 
it is seldom seen out of the kitchen garden. <A. tenuifolius, 
perhaps a variety of the foregoing, has still slenderer branch- 
lets and a much shorter perianth-tube. A. Browssonétii is a 
climbing spiny species, from the Canary Islands, having red 
berries similar to those of the above. There are upwards of 
fifty other species in temperate Europe and Asia and the tropics 
of Africa and Asia. The name is of Greck origin, applied by 
the ancients to the edible species. 
26. CORDYLINE. 
This elegant genus of Palm-like plants, though none are 
hardy, deserves mentioning here as the species are now exten- 
sively employed in Summer decorative gardening. They are 
erect usually unbranched trees, bearing a tuft of long narrow 
drooping leaves at the summit of the trunk, which in some 
species attains a height of 30 or 40 feet. Flowers white, small, 
in branched panicles, and rarely produced on young plants such 
as are usually seen in gardens. Fruit baccate, few-seeded. 
Name from xopdvAy, a club. The hardiest species are those 
from New Zealand, of which (. australis with narrow leaves, 
and C. indivisa with broad leaves, are the commonest. There 
are numerous other species in cultivation, frequently under the 
name Dracdia. 7 
27. CONVALLARIA. 
This genus is limited to the following species, distinguished 
amonest the baccate genera by its leafless flower-scape and 
globose flowers. The name is from the Latin convallis, a 
valley, the natural habitat of this plant. 
1, C. mejalis, Lily-of-the-Valley (fig. 257).—This is so 
universally known as to render a description almost super- 
fluons. Its delicate white exquisitely scented flowers and 
bright green foliage are known by almost everybody; and the 
demand for it is so great that it is not only cultivated in the 
open ground, but forced in pots, and may be procured at our 
