The Martynia 329 



mands no special treatment. Seeds may be started in 

 frames or planted in the open as soon as warm weather 

 comes. Its use is not extensive, but the seeds find a place 

 in the standard catalogues. It often self -sows, coming up 

 the following year ; in this way it- is reported as an intro- 

 duced or escaped plant in regions far outside its native 

 range. It is frequently grown for ornament or as a 

 curiosity. Figs. 200 to 205 show the features of this odd 

 plant. 



The martynia or unicorn plant is one of the few species of 

 the Martyniacese. As now treated, the family comprises three 

 genera, and the genus Martynia proper has hut a single species, 

 while the common martynia of the gardens goes into the genus 

 Proboscidea, characterized by a short corolla-tube and 4 fertile 

 stamens. 



The martynia mostly offered by American seedsmen 

 amongst vegetable-garden seeds becomes Proboscidea louisiana, 

 Wooton & Standley, Contr. U. S. Nat. Mus. xix, 602. 1915. 

 (Martynia louisiana, Mill. Gard. Diet. Ed. 8. 1768. M. probo- 

 scidea, Gloxin, Obs. Bot. 14. 1785. P. Jussieui, Steud. Nomeii. 

 Ed. 2, ii, 397. 1841.) It is an odd densely clammy-pubescent 

 low wide-spreading tender annual herb with thick opposite 

 divaricate branches : leaves alternate or subopposite, soft and 

 thick, mostly horizontal or nearly so, long-petioled, round- 

 ovate to oblong-ovate, obtuse, wavy-margined but not lobed, 

 strongly palmately ribbed, cordate and often unequaJl at the 

 base, the basal auricles turned upwards : flowers large, in 

 racemes that become central in the forks, square-ended in bud ; 

 calyx unequally 5-lobed, the tipper lobes much longer, slit to 

 the base on the lower side, subtended by 2 small pad-like or 

 lanceolate deciduous bracts ; corolla light violet to purple, 1% 

 in. long, tube 1% in. long and Ya in. diameter crosswise at the 

 mouth, hairy outside, limb unequally 5-lobed, oblique with the 

 rounded middle lobe largest and projected forward and undu- 



