CLIII.— THE MILKWORT. 
Polygala vulgaris Linne. 
T HE Family Polygalace cb is decidedly an isolated one, with a complex floral 
structure which at once suggests a high grade of specialisation. It includes 
some 700 species in fifteen genera, belonging to Temperate and Tropical regions but 
represented in most parts of the world, more than half the species belonging to the 
genus Polygala. They comprise herbs, shrubs, climbing plants, and small trees, and 
have simple, entire, exstipulate leaves, while the flowers, which are in bracteate spikes 
or racemes, have a curiously misleading resemblance in form and in their method of 
pollination to those of the PapilionacecB. Each flower is in the axil of a bract and has 
two lateral deciduous bracteoles and five imbricate persistent sepals, the odd one 
posterior and the two lateral ones large and petaloid, forming “ wings,” to which the 
conspicuousness of the flower is due. Of the five petals normally present and 
alternating with the sepals, the two lateral ones are sometimes absent, while the 
two posterior and one anterior are more or less united into a tube and to the 
split tube formed by the filaments. It is noteworthy that, unlike the case of the 
PapilionacecB, the odd sepal here is posterior, and the keel-like anterior portion of 
the corolla is formed by one, instead of two, petals. This anterior petal ends in a 
hood with a crest of two tufts of finger-like lobes, which, with the coloured and 
green-veined lateral sepals, form the most striking features of the blossoms. Of the 
ten stamens in two whorls, of which some traces can be detected, both the posterior 
and anterior are suppressed, so that eight remain, which are united into an 
epipetalous tube below, but separate above into two lateral sets of four each, usually 
one-chambered and each opening by a terminal pore. The gynasceum usually 
consists of two united and superior antero-posterior carpels each containing one 
anatropous ovule, with a single terminal style ending in two lobes, one a spoon- 
shaped stigmatic hollow and the other a viscid disc. When the flower is visited by 
an insect in search of honey, the keel is depressed by its weight and the essential 
organs emerge from it, much as in the PapilionacecB. Coming in contact with the 
viscid disc, the proboscis of the insect-visitor is rendered sticky, so that some pollen 
from the tubular anthers adheres to it. This, when the insect passes to the next 
flower, will be swept off into the spoon-like stigmatic hollow. In Polygala, the only 
European genus, the fruit is a compressed capsule, enclosed in the persistent calyx, 
and bursting, when ripe, loculicidally, i.e. along its two margins, giving the plant 
a further misleading resemblance to the Leguminosce. The seeds are pendulous 
with the raphe ventral, a downy testa, and a trilobed aril at the hilum or basal 
scar of attachment. 
Though our three or four British species are all low-growing, little plants, the 
dwarf, shrubby, evergreen Bastard Box ( Polygala Chamcebuxus Linne) of Central 
Europe, often seen in our shrubberies, has relatively large and fragrant cream-coloured 
