6 
Dicotyledons with Polypetalous Flowers . 
Natural Order 
PAP AVERAGES. Tab. 5. 
Diagnosis. —Herbs with yellow or milky juice. Flowers regular, dime¬ 
rous. Stamens hypogynous, indefinite, free. Pistil syncarpous; placentas 
parietal. Seeds albuminous. 
Distribution. —A small Natural Order, chiefly confined to the North Temperate zone. Several 
of the Poppies (Papaver) are wide-spread weeds of cultivation. 
Number of British Genera, 5; Species, 8. 
LEAVES usually lobed or dissected. 
FLOWERS solitary, large, fugacious, on long peduncles. 
SEPALS 2, rarely more, falling on expansion of the flower ; forming an extinguisher-like cap in Eschscholtzia. 
PETALS 4-6, crumpled in bud. 
STAMENS perigynous in Eschscholtzia. 
OVARY one-celled, the base sheathed by the receptacle in Eschscholtzia; in Poppy (Papaver) the placentas 
often nearly reaching to the centre of the flower, but without cohering. 
OVULES* in Poppy covering the sides of the infolded carpellary margins. 
FRUIT a capsule, dehiscing by pores immediately underneath the apex in Poppy ; narrow, elongate, and two- 
valved in Celandine (Ghclidonium) and Horned Poppy ( Glaucium ). 
USES, &cf.— Papaver somniferum affords the important narcotic drug Opium, and its derivatives Laudanum 
and Morphia ; it is largely cultivated in the Levant and in India. Opium is the inspissated milky juice collected 
from gashes made in the unripe fruit. The seeds of Opium Poppy yield a wholesome oil. The orange-coloured 
juice of Celandine has a popular reputation for the cure of warts. Several of the Poppies, especially double varieties 
of the common Scarlet Poppy (Papaver Phceas), Opium Poppy, and the large scarlet-flowered P. orientale and P. 
bracteatum, also the Californian orange-flowered annual Eschscholtzia and its ally Platystemon, are common in 
gardens. 
