180 THE PEAFLOWER TRIBE. 



The Sumachs of our shrubberies (species of Rhus) belong to the large 

 family of Terebinthacece, widely spread over the temperate and hotter 

 regions of the globe, but unrepresented in Britain. They are usually 

 shrubs or trees, with mostly compound leaves, small regular flowers, 

 definite stamens, inserted under a perigynous disk, quite free from the 

 ovary, and no albumen in the seed. 



XXIV. THE PEAFLOWEE, TRIBE. PAPILIONACE2E. 



(A Tribe of the Leguminous family, or Leguminosce.) 



Herbs, shrubs, or trees ; the leaves alternate (or, in a few exotic 

 genera, opposite), usually furnished with stipules, simple or more 

 frequently compound ; the leaflets either pinnately or digitately 

 arranged on their common stalk. Flowers in axillary or terminal 

 racemes or spikes, rarely solitary. Sepals combined into a single 

 calyx, more or less divided into 5 or fewer teeth or lobes. Corolla 

 very irregular, consisting of 5 petals ; the upper one, called the 

 standard, is outside of all in the bud, and usually the broadest ; 

 the two lateral ones, called icings, are between the standard and 

 the two lower ones, which are inside of all, and united more or 

 less by their outer edge into a single one called the Tee el ; the 

 claws of all five petals remaining free. Stamens 10, the filaments 

 in the British species either nionadelphous, all united in a sheath 

 round the ovary, or diadelpJious, when the upper one is free and 

 the other 9 united in a sheath. Ovary single, 1-celled, with 1, 2, 

 or more ovules arrranged along the inner or upper angle (the one 

 next the standard) of the cavity. Style simple. Fruit a pod, 

 usually opening in 2 valves. Seeds with 2 large cotyledons and 

 no albumen. 



A very numerous tribe, widely distributed over the whole surface of 

 the globe, and easily known by the peculiar form and arrangement of 

 the petals, constituting the well-known peafloiver called by botanists 

 papilionaceous, comparing it, by a not very intelligible stretch of imagi- 

 nation, to a butterfly. The whole family comprises two other tribes or 

 suborders, chiefly tropical or southern: the Ccesalpinia tribe, repre- 

 sented in our plantations by the Judas-tree (Cercis) and the Gleditschia 

 or, in our plant-houses, by Cassias, JBauhinias, and occasionally some 



