72 Gratiola aurea. 



Plant from a span to fourteen inches high. Stem towards the 

 root procumbent and radicating, terete, jointed, assurgent from the 

 base, slightly quadrangular above, marked with two furrows. Root 

 perennial, fibrous, creeping under ground. Leaves somewhat thick, 

 grass-green, opposite, about one inch long, and less than two- 

 eighths broad, closely sessile, dilated at base, acute, and marked witli 

 about two, seldom three acute cerratures on either margin, near the 

 apex, dotted under a lens with glandular pits, and three-nerved. 

 The nerves are indistinct to the naked eye. Peduncles scarcely the 

 length of the longest leaves, slender, pubescent, (not villous, as 

 Pursh describes them.) Flowers solitary, alternate for the most 

 part, but in very luxuriant specimens, sometimes opposite, seldom 

 more than two expanded at a time on the same fplant, and often 

 only one. Leaves of the calix nearly equal in length, linear and 

 acute. Bracts longer than the calicine leaves. Corolla gamboge- 

 yellow. Tube hairy, oblique, ventricose in the middle ; upper lip 

 roundish and notched, the lower equally trifid, segments oblong, 

 the intermediate o»e notched at the apex. Throat of the corolla 

 tube hairy within. Filaments two, the length of the tube. Style 

 longer than the stamens and persistent. Stigma funnel-shape, 

 oblique. Capsule ovate, scarcely as long as the calix Seeds small, 

 numerous. 



Inhabits wet sandy places, the margins of ditches and rivulets 



