CXXVll. — THE COMMON AND ALPINE 
LADY’S-MANTLE. 
Alchemilla vulgaris Linne and A. alpina Linne. 
T he Tribe Sangxiisorhece includes the three genera Alchemilla^ Agrimonia, and 
Polerium represented in this and the two following Plates. It is characterised 
by having a small cup-like floral receptacle within which the carpels — which are 
from one to five in number — are enclosed when ripe. 
The genus Alchemilla, which comprises some forty species, natives of Temperate 
climates, has several well-marked characters which mark it off sharply from the rest. 
Though all are herbaceous, some of the species are annual and others perennial. 
The orbicular, more or less deeply divided, and serrate leaves, from which the plants 
derive all their popular appellations, are an easily recognised feature ; and they have 
generally the well-developed leafy stipules so frequent in the Family. The flowers 
are individually minute, an exceptional character among Rosacea; ; but, massed 
together, their pale shade of green renders them fairly conspicuous, and they secrete 
honey which is attractive to flies, though not usually to other insects. The 
symmetry of the flower is often tetramerous instead of the more frequent 
pentamerous arrangement, though the presence of either four or five leaves in each 
floral whorl is not distinctive even of particular species. The presence of an 
epicalyx is unique in this Tribe and serves to link Alchemilla to Poienlillece ; whilst 
the absence of a corolla seems to mark the degenerate rather than the primitive type. 
Stamens or carpels are often also absent or rudimentary, so that the flowers are 
practically monoecious. The honey is secreted by a ring-shaped nectary round the 
mouth of the receptacular tube, from beneath the outer margin of which spring the 
stamens, usually four in number, between the sepals — opposite, that is, to the smaller 
leaves of the epicalyx. The anthers burst transversely and have the peculiarity not 
only of opening only in dry weather but of closing again in wet if they have not 
discharged all their pollen. Though there may be as many as five carpels, there is 
generally but one, which rises from one side of the apex of a short stalk or gynophore 
springing from the base of the hollow cup-like receptacular tube. Its style rises 
from its base, as if a continuation of the gynophore, and the apex of the ovary and 
the style between them nearly block the mouth of the receptacular tube narrowed as 
it is by the nectariferous ring. A single ovule rises from the base of the ovary. 
On a summer morning we may generally notice, in the moist lowland or sub- 
alpine pastures in which Alchemilla vulgaris grows, an interesting function of its leaves. 
Though all the surrounding vegetation may be dry, these leaves bear a glistening 
coronal of what are apparently dew-drops resting on the apex of each of their many 
finely-pointed serratures. These drops may trickle down the grooves over the 
palmately-radiating veins to the base of the leaf without wetting the hairy general 
