410 
SCIENCE OF BOTANY. 
the nourishment of men and animals as the greater part of the le¬ 
guminous or pulse tribe. The flowers have the name of papilionace¬ 
ous, from a fancied resemblance to the form of a butterfly, (papilio.) 
ON LABIATE AND PERSONATE FLOWERS. 
The flowers which I have hitherto described are polypetalous, and 
yet I ought perhaps to have begun with the regular monopetalous 
flowers which have a more simple structure, but it was this very 
simplicity which discouraged me. 
Among the irregular monopetalous flowers, there is a tribe whose 
physiognomy is so marked that we can easily distinguish them. It 
is that to whose flowers Linneus has given the name of ringent, be¬ 
cause they are cut into two lips, the opening of which either natural, 
or produced by a slight compression of the Angers, gives them the 
air of a gaping mouth. This tribe is divided into two branches, one 
of labiate or ringent flowers, properly so called, and the other of per¬ 
sonate or masked flowers. The character common to all the tribe is 
a monopetalous corolla cut into two lips, the upper called the casque 
or helmet, the lower the beard; four stamens, almost in the same 
row, distinguished into two pairs, one pair longer and the other 
shorter. The inspection of the object itself will explain these cha¬ 
racters better than can be done by the pen. Let us begin with the 
labiate ones, and for example take the white dead nettle, (Lamium 
album) which, notwithstanding its name, has no affinity with the 
other nettles, except in the shape of the leaves. This plant is so 
common every where, and continues so long in flower that it is no 
ways difficult to find. It bears a monopetalous labiate corolla with 
the casque arched, in order to cover the rest of the flower, and parti¬ 
cularly the stamens which keep all four of them close under cover of 
its roof. The longer and shorter pair will be easily discerned, and 
in the midst of them the style of the same colour, but distinguished 
from them by being forked at the end, instead of bearing an anther 
like the stamens. The beard bends back or hangs down so as to 
expose the inside of the corolla almost to the bottom. In this genus 
the lower lip is divided lengthwise in the middle, but that is not ge¬ 
neral in the tribe. The corolla, when pulled off, is open at the bot¬ 
tom, because it was fastened to the receptacle so as to leave a circu¬ 
lar opening by which the pistil and what surrounds it may grow up 
within the tube. That which surrounds the pistil in the labiate tribe 
is the rudiment of the fruit, consisting of four embryos, which be¬ 
come four naked seeds that are without any pericarp or covering, the 
monophvllous calyx, divided into five segments, serving this purpose. 
