108 
65. ATROPACEiE. 
PI. of very variable size and luxuriance, ranging from a few 
inches to 2 or 3 ft. in height, with copious dark gr. foliage. Root 
long w. woody nearly simple perpendicular. Branches widely 
and stithy divaricate angular, and with the young 1. and petioles 
mealy-puberulous. L. somewhat fleshy and flaccid or fast 
withering, 2 or 3 in. long, 1-2 wide, tlieir teeth large unequal 
remote acute. Cal. membranous 1-1| in. long, pale gr. bronzed 
or tinged in /3 with pale purplish brown, narrowly 5-winged. 
Cor. scentless in Mad. with shortly and finely awned lobes ; in 
a cream-col. outside, w. inside ; in /3 pale v. or lilac with the 
throat inside and angles outside darker lilac or v.-purple. Stam. 
and style f length of cor., included and not reaching above the 
throat. Fil. round and smooth upwards, subpubescent and a 
little thickened and grooved inside downwards below their free 
portion ; their lower half adnate to cor. -tube. Antli. erect ad- 
nate affixed by their base, free distinct short linear very narrow, 
2 lines long, with (in /3) v. -black borders and dull w. pollen. 
Style smooth throughout and like the fil. pale gr. downwards, 
paler or whitish upwards ; stigma gr. rather large, 3 mill, long, 
2 broad, capitate ovoidal, formed of two opposite broad deflexed 
or decurrent lobes. Cal. after flowering marcescent nearly to 
the base, and in fr. deciduous, leaving only the gr. cup-shaped 
base which becomes presently strongly deflexed, forming a hard 
stiff gr. subplicate or jagged-edged turned-down frill or collar 
beneath the fr. Caps, erect in the forks of the st., shortly 
stalked, ovoidal, the size of a Walnut or 2x 1A in. diam., dark 
gr. finally pale brown, covered all over with short hard sharp 
and pungent subequal conoidal spines and divided into two 
halves by a vertical shallow groove or raphe ; 2-celled at top, 
4-celled below, the large transversely dilated placentae giving off 
about halfway down a wing or diaphragm completely subdivid- 
ing each cell into two ; splitting from the top downwards finally 
into 4 valves; the apical spines but little longer than the rest 
and not above 3 or 4 lines long. Seeds flattened, roundish oval, 
subreniform or obtusely subtriangular, dark coffee-brown or 
black, scrobiculate or corrugately foveolateand very closely and 
minutely reticulato-pustulate, 4 mill, long, 3 broad : they were 
formerly and are perhaps still sometimes fraudulently used to 
adulterate Onion-seeds, which are however much smaller and 
sharply trigonal. 
The foregoing description is from var. /3, compared throughout 
with one of a, which differs in no respect whatever except the 
few points above specified. Both in Mad., the Canaries and Cape 
Verdes /d is assuredly the common normal state. 
