OF ORNAMENTAL ANNUALS. 
Ill 
CHAPTER XXXIY. 
COMPOSITE. 
Essential Character. —Limb of calyx wanting or membranaceous, 
or divided into bristles, pale®, or hairs. Corolla 5-toothed or 5-lobed, 
tubular, ligulate, or bilabiate, inserted on the top of the ovarium. 
Stamens 5, distinct, perigynous. Anthers combined, seldom free. 
Ovarium adheriug to the tube of the calyx, 1-celled, 1-seeded. Style 
one. Stigmas two. Fruit an achenium crowned by the limb of the 
calyx. Albumen none. Usually herbs, rarely shrubs. Leaves 
exstipulate. Flowers disposed in heads on a receptacle, or surrounded 
by an involucrum, the scales of which are sometimes mixed with the 
flowers and are then called paleae.—(G. Don.) 
Description, &c. —Composite flowers take their name from being each composed of a great number of small 
flowers or florets. Thus what we call a daisy, is in fact a head or cluster of small flowers, each perfect in itself, 
and each capable of producing fruit or seed. These small flowers, or florets, are of two kinds: viz. those 
composing what is called the ray, and which in the daisy are white ; and those composing the disk, which in the 
daisy, and many other composite flowers, are yellow. The florets of the ray are called ligulate, and are shaped 
somewhat like a cornet of paper, being widely open at top, and tubular only at the bottom ; while the florets of 
the disk are called tubular, from their being tube-shaped throughout. In many of the genera, as for example in 
the Dandelion, the seeds or rather the fruit, are crowned with a kind of feather or wing, which botanists cajl the 
pappus. As the flowers belonging to this order are very numerous, botanists have classed them in several minor 
divisions ; and the latest and most masterly of these modes of arrangement is that given by Professor De Candolle 
in the fifth, sixth, and seventh volumes of his Prodromus, in which all the Composite are arranged in three great 
divisions; and these are again divided into eight distinct tribes. It would be useless, in a work like the present, 
to enter into any detailed account of these tribes ; particularly as several of them do not contain any ornamental 
annual flowers; and we shall therefore content ourselves with merely placing the flowers contained in each tribe 
together, and mentioning the name of the tribe before that of the first plant belonging to it that we describe. The 
generic and specific characters are greatly shortened; and we are indebted for them to our excellent friend 
Geo. Don, Esq., F.L.S., whose merits as a botanist are too well known to need any eulogium from us. We have 
generally retained the popular names of the plants, by which they are known in the nurseries and seed-shops, as 
the principal ones; and have given the new names as synonymes : but in some instances we have deviated from 
this rule; as for example in calling Madia splendens by its new name of Madaria; Rudleckia amplexicaulis , 
Dracopis , &c.; because these names were attached to the figures of the flowers in our plates. 
Before quitting the subject it may be as well to mention that the old arrangement of the composite flowers 
was into three sections, the first of which contained the radiate flowered plants, such as the aster, the sun-flower, 
&c., the flower-heads of which consist of tubular florets in the disk and ligulate florets in the ray; the second, 
the thistle-headed plants, the florets in the flower-heads of which are all tubular, but spreading very wide at the 
mouth, as in the Centaurea or Bluebottle, Sweet Sultan, &c.; and the third, the succory-headed plants, the 
flower-heads of which are composed entirely of ligulate florets, such as the Tragopon or Goat’s Beard, 
Hawkweed, &c. 
A A 
