LXXXIV.— THE GREATER CELANDINE. 
Chelidomum ??iajus Linne. 
T he Order Rhceadales in Engler’s system, named from the Greek poia?, rhoias^ 
a poppy, corresponds approximately with the Cohort Parietales in Bentham and 
Hooker’s. This latter was named from the placentation or position of the ovules in 
the ovary, they being generally in this group parietal^ i.e. attached to the outer wall 
of the ovary (Latin paries^ a wall), the margins of the carpellary leaves not being 
carried in to the centre of the ovary. Consequently the ovary in this group is 
one-chambered, or is partly divided by partially prolonged placentas, or is completely 
divided into two chambers by an ingrowth from the placentas, which remain parietal. 
Very few members of this group become woody or reach the dimensions of 
shrubs. Their flowers have their parts mostly in whorls, with distinct calyx and 
corolla, hypogynous stamens varying in number, and superior carpels, two to eight 
in number and syncarpous. The Order includes the Families Papaverace^e, 
Fumariaceif^ Crudfer<e^ and Resedacea among British plants. 
The Family Papaveraceo", though many of its members are very familiar plants, 
is but a small one, comprising about a hundred species in some twenty genera. 
They are herbaceous, either annual or perennial, with a thick milky juice, or latex^ 
which is either white or coloured ; scattered, exstipulate leaves ; polysymmetric 
flowers ; two caducous sepals ; four petals in two whorls, generally crumpled in the 
bud ; indefinite stamens ; little or no style ; and indefinite ovules which become 
small, oily, albuminous seeds. Most members of the Family are narcotic or acridly 
poisonous ; and most of them have conspicuous, honey-secreting, insect-visited 
flowers, which are protandrous. The majority of them belong to the Temperate 
regions of the Northern Hemisphere. A main division of the Family may be based 
upon the fruit, which may be either a capsule dehiscing by a series of pores, or a 
long pod-like structure or siliqua dehiscing from its apex to its base by two long 
valves. The latter type of fruit occurs in Chelidonium and in Glaucium. 
The Greater Celandine {Chelidonium majus Linne) is one of two species forming 
a genus which is confined to Europe and Asia, and, so far as this country is 
concerned, seems a very doubtful native, being mainly confined to waste places and 
hedgerows but little removed from the old cottage gardens in which it was formerly 
grown medicinally. It is, however, of very general occurrence, and has undoubtedly 
been here from very early times. Turner, for instance, in his “ Libellus ” (1538), 
says that the English call it “ Celendyne aut Celidony ” ; and in his “ Names of 
Herbes ” (1548) that it 
“is called in english Selendine, in duch Schelwurtz, in french Chelidoine or Esclerc. It groweth in hedges in the spring and 
hath a yealowe juice,” 
In modern times the unique beauty of outline in the leaves has attracted the 
attention of the designer. They are large, and very often, as Parkinson says, “ of a 
