402 



THE VALERIAN FAMILY. 



flowers in the forks of the stem, and the 

 bracts small and narrow. Fruit broadly 

 ovoid, scarcely compressed, crowned by 

 the little green oblique border of the 

 calyx. On being cut across, it shows 

 one small cell occupied by the seed, and 

 two somewhat larger empty ones. 



In cornfields and waste places, widely 

 spread over central and southern Europe 

 and western Asia. Not unfrequent in 

 Britain, and perhaps truly indigenous. 

 Fl. summer. 



Fig. 483 



4. Narrow-fruited Cornsalad. Valerianella dentata, Koch. 



(Fig. 484.) 



( Valeriana. Eng. Bot. t. 1370.) 



Habit and foliage precisely those of 

 the sharp -fruited C, and the fruit is in 

 the same manner crowned by the ob- 

 lique border of the calyx, but the fruit 

 is narrower, slightly compressed from 

 front to back, and the seed occupies the 

 entire cavity without any empty cells ; 

 these are represented by two longitu- 

 dinal ribs on the inner face of the fruit, 

 which, when examined under the mi- 

 croscope, will be found to be hollow. 



The geographical range appears to be 

 the same as that of the sharp-fruited 

 C, with which it is often confounded. 

 FL summer. It varies in its fruits more 

 or less hairy, and the calyx-border 

 sometimes cup-shaped, nearly as long as 

 the fruit, and scarcely oblique, some- 

 times smaller and very oblique, and some of these forms have been 

 distinguished as species, under the names of V. eriocarpa, V. trun- 

 cat a, etc. 



Fig. 484. 



