CLII. — THE NARROW-LEAVED AND CATHARTIC 
FLAX. 
Linum angustifolium Hudson and Linum catharticum Linne. 
HE Family Linacece form a well-marked group of nine genera and about 120 
species, represented in most parts of the world, the Flaxes, i.e. the genus Linum, 
being the most numerous and important genus. The majority of them are annual 
or perennial herbs, though some are shrubby : they have scattered, or occasionally 
opposite, simple and entire leaves, with or without stipules : their flowers are in cymes, 
polysymmetric, usually pentamerous and perfect, with five or ten monadelphous 
stamens, having sometimes a whorl of alternating staminodes, a syncarpous ovary, 
and free styles ; and their fruit is usually a superior, many-chambered capsule, 
often having extra partial partitions formed by the ingrowth of the midribs of the 
carpels, with one or two seeds in each of the false chambers thus formed. The 
capsule usually bursts by splitting its septa (seplicidally) , each mericarp thus formed 
splitting into two valves. The ovules are pendulous with a ventral raphe and 
upward-facing micropyle ; and in the Flaxes the ripe seed has a mucilaginous testa 
and contains oil. 
There are four species of Linum found in Britain in a wild or semi-wild state, 
and they are distinguished from the little Flax-seed or All-seed (Radiola linoides Roth) 
figured on Plate CLIV, by the parts of their flowers being all in fives, whilst in Radiola 
they are in fours. The Flaxes have thus five sepals, five petals, five stamens, with five 
staminodes and five carpels, forming an apparently ten-chambered, ten-seeded ovary. 
To discriminate between the larger, blue-flowered forms, Sir J. E. Smith was 
probably right when he said that “ the calyx affords the most certain specific 
characters” ; but this discrimination is intimately connected with the ancient history 
of the cultivation of Flax, whether for fibre, for oil, or for both. The strong fibrous 
bast tissue of the slender stems is obtained by “ retting ” and “ heckling,” i.e. by 
steeping the stems in water to remove the cellular tissue by a process of fermentation 
and to separate the woody axis, and combing the fibres into parallel order for 
spinning. While the gummy testa of the seed combines with its oily contents to 
render Linseed valuable for poultices, the oil itself, of which about 38 per cent, exists 
in the seed of the cultivated Flax, is a most important commercial product. Not 
only is it the chief drying oil used in paints and varnishes, but in combination with 
refuse cork it is now extensively employed in the manufacture of linoleum, oil-cloth, 
and of various substitutes for india-rubber; whilst the refuse “cake ” from which the 
oil has been extracted is a most valuable feeding and fattening material for cattle. 
Alphonse De Candolle, whose study of the history of Flaxes extended over 
many years, came to the conclusion that before the Aryan immigration the perennial 
Linum angustifolium Hudson was cultivated by the Stone-Age lake-dwellers of North 
