16 
3. A corolla laid open, showing thus the stamens. 
4. A stamen detached. 
5. Style and stigmas. 
6. A fruit. 
7. Transverse section of a fruit, exhibiting the cotyledons. 
8. Embryo. 
2-8. Enlarged, but to various extent. 
VII. 
CENTAUREA MELITENSIS, Linn6. 
The Malta-Thistle. 
Indigenous to Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and South- 
Western Asia. 
Neither this nor any other Centaur ea is so formidable as any of 
the true Carduus-Thistles, nor do they so easily spread from seeds 
to far distances ; flowering under ordinary circumstances only 
once from the same root. Vestiture short, soft, grey, partially 
evanescent. Height of plant to three feet or exceptionally more. 
Stem erect, usually few -branched, foliaceously dilated at its angles. 
Radical leaves of good size, narrowed into a conspicuous petiole, 
pinnatifid, the end-lobe largest ; cauline leaves rather small, long 
decurrent beyond the point of affixion, from narrow-lanceolar to 
broad-linear, quite entire or somewhat denticulated, the floral 
leaves much shortened. Headlets of flowers absolutely terminal, 
or some at the ends of short but seldom crowded branchlets 
almost axillary, comparative ] j small. Involucre turgid, but 
generally less broad than given in the illustrative plate, also less 
spreading and spinulous in the downward portion, often partici- 
pating in the general vestiture, its constituent bracts downward 
much appressed, near the upper end most of them spreadingly 
spinular-denticulated, and except the lowest and innermost ending 
into a spinule of a length less than that of the whole bract. 
Receptacle beset with numerous capillulary-setular bracts. Co- 
rollas yellow r ; those of the peripheral flowers somewhat enlarged 
and generally sterile ; tube thinly filiform, rather suddenly widen- 
ing, the dilated portion nearly as long as the five narrow and 
acutish lobes. Stamens alternate to the corolla-lobes ; their 
filaments glabrous ; the anthers shaped like a narrow elongated 
arrow-head, but slightly contracted at the middle. Style capillu- 
lary, with circles of papillular hairlets at the upper end, otherwise 
almost glabrous. Stigmas semicylindric, somewhat curved, con- 
nate except at the summit. Fruit ellipsoid, moderately com- 
pressed, at the top truncated, above the narrow base unilaterally 
much impressed, scantily covered with almost imperceptible hair- 
lets, shiningly greyish outside. Pappus-bristlets flattish, but 
