LXI.— STITCHWORTS. 
Stellaria Linne. 
HILST having distinct sepals, like the Tribe Spergule the Alsine<e have no 
stipules. Many of them have, as we have seen, small, white flowers, which 
may have entire petals, as in the Pearlworts, and may either have the valves of their 
capsules equal in number to their styles, or, as in Stellaria , twice as many. 
The genus Stellaria comprises some eighty species, natives of Temperate and 
cold climates. Its name, which obviously refers to its star-like blossoms (from the 
Latin Stella , a star), is traced back to Otto Brunfels. Brunfels was born near 
Mayence about 1464, and, after being a Carthusian monk, became a schoolmaster 
at Strasburg and eventually a physician at Berne, where he died in 1534. His 
“ Herbarum vivae eicones ” was published at Strasburg in 1530-6, and, although the 
text consists mainly of literary discussions as to the plants intended by the names 
in earlier writers, this book is generally considered to mark the beginning of the 
Renaissance of botany, because many of the beautiful woodcuts it contains have 
obviously been drawn direct from Nature. 
The six or seven British species have many points in common. They are 
mostly glabrous and so slender that the name Stitchwort has been misunderstood as 
referring to their thread-like stem. Their leaves are generally narrow and pointed, 
and their white flowers in loose cymes, secreting some honey, and protandrous. 
Although in some, as in the Common Chickweed ( Stellaria media Villars), self- 
pollination commonly occurs, insect visits seem thus to be, in all cases, provided 
for. Although reduction in number and size of the floral leaves also occurs, five is 
the prevailing number, and the petals are bifid, sometimes so deeply as to be each 
mistaken for two. The stamens are perigynous, usually ten in number, in two 
whorls which mature in succession, the outer row rising and bursting their anthers 
before the inner ones, while the honey is secreted by five glands situated between 
the bases of the stamens. There are generally three styles, and the globose capsules 
split at the top into six valves. 
With these points in common, however, there are various interesting distinctive 
peculiarities of the different species. The Chickweed is an annual, flowering almost 
all the year round and completing its life-history within the compass of a few 
weeks. In winter cleistogamous flowers are produced ; and at other seasons the 
stamens, which have violet anthers, are generally reduced in number to eight, six, 
three, or even two, and mature almost simultaneously with the stigmas. Failing 
insect visits, the flowers commonly pollinate themselves ; but experiments show 
the seeds from cross-fertilised flowers to be more vigorous than those from the 
self-fertilised. While the rest of the plant is glabrous, there is a line of com- 
paratively long juicy hairs down one side of each internode of the stem and down 
both sides of the petioles of the lower leaves. The line of hairs on the stem shifts 
