OP ORNAMENTAL ANNUALS. 
39 
that I think it is more advisable on the whole to consider Fumarieas as a reduced and irregular form of Papa- 
veracem than a distinct natural order.” ( Lindl. Nat. Syst. of Bot., 2 d edit. p. 10.) 
The principal popular distinctions between the Fumitory tribe and the Poppies are that the juice of the former 
is watery, and the latter milky, and that the stems of the Fumitory are very brittle. The petals of the most 
common kinds of fumitory are also tubular and curiously shaped, somewhat resembling the flower of the 
larkspur, while those of the poppy tribe are cup-shaped. 
GENUS I. 
HYPECOUM, Tour. THE HYPECOUM. 
Lin. Syst. TETRANDRIA DIGYNIA. 
Generic Character. —Petals 4, inner ones usually 3-lobed. Stamens 4. Stigmas 2. Capsules elongated, 2-valved, knotted or jointed 
transversely_(G. Don.) 
Description, &c. —Small plants with yellow flowers, and very remarkable seed-pods, natives of the south of 
Europe and Asia ; which have been long since introduced into Britain, but which are very seldom seen in flower- 
gardens. The name of Hypeeoum is derived from the Greek word hypecheo , to rattle, from the seeds rattling in 
the pods when shaken. 
1.—HYPECOUM PROCUMBENS, Lin. 
Synonymes _H. nodosum, Lam. ; H. arcuatum, M&nch. 
Engravings. —Swt. Brit. FI. Gard. t. 217, and our fig. 4 in Plate 7. 
Specific Character. —Capsules articulated, compressed, arched ; 
THE PROCUMBENT HYPECOUM. 
petals 3-lobed, external ones smooth on the back. The two outer 
petals largest. Central segment of the inner petals toothed.—(G. 
Don.) 
Description, &c. —This curious little plant is interesting in a botanical point of view, as forming the con¬ 
necting link between the poppies and the fumitory tribe; plants so different, however, in their external 
appearance, that no common observer who has seen the common fumitory and the corn poppy growing near 
each other in a corn-field, would ever imagine that there was the slightest relationship between them. The 
Hypeeoum , though resembling the fumitory in its leaves, certainly at first sight appears much more like a poppy 
in its flowers; but upon examination, even its flowers will be found very different from those of any of the poppy 
tribe. They are not produced singly, each on a long flower-stalk rising from the root-leaves, like those of the 
poppy, but in little heads, each somewhat resembling an umbel when the flowers first expand, but forming after¬ 
wards a kind of raceme. The flowers are produced sometimes two together, and sometimes singly, on the short 
foot-stalks, which united form this head or umbel; and each flower is small, of a bright yellow, and rather 
curiously formed, being composed of four petals, three-lobed and toothed at the edges, the two outer ones of which 
are much larger than the others, something like those of the Platystiyma which we mentioned in a former page. 
