Fumavria. | | ~-Y, FUMARIACEA. 21 
family in the irregular flowers and definite stamens, that it may be more 
convenient in this work to retain it as a distinct Order. 
Fruit a small roundish nut withoneseed . . . © © « J, FuMARIA, 
Fruit an elongated pod with several seeds . ° : ° . 2, CORYDALIS, 
- Some species of Dicentra or Dielytra, a Nor th American and east 
Asiatic genus, are cultivated for the beauty of their flowers. 
I. FUMARIA. FUMITORY. 
One of the outer petals has a pouch or spur at its base. Fruit a small 
roundish green nut with a single seed, although the very young ovary is 
said to have three or four ovules, of which only one remains at the time of 
flowering. 
A genus of very few species, all apparently indigenous to the Mediter- 
ranean region, although the common one is now so widely spread over the 
globe. 
1. F. officinalis, Linn. (fig.45). Common Fumitory.—A delicate annual, 
perfectly glabrous, and of a pale green colour, usually forming, when it 
commences flowering, a dense tuft of a few inches in height, but the stem 
will often grow out to the length of from 1 to 2 or 3. feet; it is then 
generally weak or trailing, and sometimes slightly climbing, supported by 
the twisted petioles. Leaves much divided into numerous segments, 
generally 3-lobed, the lobes varying in shape from narrow-linear to broadly 
lanceolate or oblong. Flowers in racemes of 1 to 2 inches, either terminal 
or opposite the leaves, dense at first, but often lengthening much as the 
flowering advances, Pedicels short, in the axil of a very small, scale-like, 
white or coloured bract. Sepals small, white, or coloured like ‘the bracts, 
and often toothed. Petals oblong-linear, closed so as to form a tubular 
corolla, with dark-coloured tips, the spur at the base giving it the appearance 
of being attached laterally to the pedicel. Nut usually about a line in 
diameter, not quite globular, being somewhat compressed laterally. 
Common in cultivated and waste places in Europe and Central Asia, 
disappearing at high northern latitudes, but carried out asa weed of culti- 
vation to many parts of the globe. Abundant in England and southern 
Scotland, but decreases much in the north. #7. all summer and autumn. 
_ It varies much in the form of the leaf-segments, in the size and colour of 
the flower, white or red, in the size and shape of the sepals, and in the 
shape of the nuts ; and several species are generally admitted, but they run 
so much one into another, that there is every probability of their being 
mere varieties. The most prominent British forms are— 
a. FE. capreolata, Linn. (fF. pallidiflora, F. confusa, and F. muralis, 
of authors). A large luxuriant climber, attaining a length of 2 or more 
feet; leaf-segments broad; flowers 4 or 5 lines long, white or pale red, 
the sepals rather large, the nut nearly orbicular. About hedges and 
walls, much more common and more marked in southern Europe than in 
Britain. 
b. F. officinalis, Linn. (Common Fumitory). Leaf-segments neither 
very broad nor very narrow; flowers red, about 3 lines long; nuts very 
blunt, or depressed at the top, rather broader than long. Connected both 
with the preceding and the following by numerous intermediates, some of 
which are considered as species under the names of F. media, F. agraria, 
etc. 
