44 
Dicotyledons with Polypetalous Flowers . 
Natural Order 
ONAGRAGILE. Tab. 36. 
Diagnosis. —Herbs with opposite or alternate simple leaves. Calyx- 
lobes valvate in bud. Stamens perigynous, definite. Ovary inferior, 
usually 4-celled. 
Distribution.- —A considerable cosmopolitan Natural Order, most numerous in America. The 
head-quarters of Fuchsia is in Mexico and South America, with outliers in New Zealand. 
Number of British Genera, 3; Species, 13. 
Flowers usually tetramerous ; in Enchanter’s Nightshade ( Circcect ) dimerous. 
Calyx coloured in Fuchsia. 
Petals usually sessile ; clawed and three-lobed in Garden Glctrhia. 
‘FRUIT, a capsule, very long and narrow in Willow-herb (E-pilobium); a berry in Fuchsia. 
SEEDS with a tuft of hairs (< comose) in Willow-herb. 
USES, &c.—Many of the Onagraceae are gay garden-flowers, as Fuchsia, of which several species are in 
cultivation, introduced from Chili and Brazil; Glctrhia, Evening Primrose (( Enothera ), Gcturct and Lopezict also from 
the New World, and the Rose-bay Willow-herb, a species indigenous in Britain. Water Chestnut ( Trctpa natans and 
allies) affords a horned bony 1-seeded fruit, containing a farinaceous embryo, collected as food in Tibet and China. 
