COMMELINA. 
tries; all have an ornamental appearance; and 
several, as well as the two indigenous species, 
have economical properties similar to those of 
the very rough, but cannot compete with that 
species in either productiveness or facility of 
adaptation.—Lawson’s Agriculturist’s Manual.— 
Doyle's Husbandry —Low’s Elements of Agricul- 
ture,—Miller’s Dictionary.— The Gardener's Maga- 
zine.—Loudon’s Hortus Britannicus. 
COMMELINA. A genus of ornamental her- 
baceous plants, constituting the type of the na- 
tural order Commellineze. This order comprises 
the genera tradescantia, cyanotis, dichorizandra, 
| cartonema, campelia, callisia, and aneilema; and 
it has, within the gardens of Great Britain, up- 
wards of 70 species,—all herbaceous, and about 
four-fifths of them more or less tender. A large 
proportion of the order are plants of great beauty; 
and most of these have blue, reddish, or white 
flowers. The great majority are natives of 
America; and not one species exists in Europe 
except as an exotic. 
The genus Commelina comprises at least 50 
| known species; and about 25 of these have been 
| introduced to Britain. 
The common species, C. 
communis, is a hardy annual, and was first brought 
from America in 1732. Its stems are trailing, 
stoloniferous, and about two feet long; its leaves 
are oval, spear-shaped, pointed, smooth, and 
deep green, and occur singly at the joints of the 
stems, each leaf embracing the joint with its 
base; and its flowers grow on footstalks in twos 
and threes, from a compressed spatha, out of the 
bossom of the leaves, and they have each two 
large blue petals and four smaller green ones, 
often mistaken for sepals, and appear in June 
and July—The upright species, C. erecta, is a 
hardy, evergreen herb, and was introduced from 
Virginia in 1732. Its roots consist of numerous 
white fibres; its stems are erect, rough, herbace- 
ous, 12 or 18 inches high, and about the thick- 
ness of goose-quills ; its leaves are similar in form 
and manner of growth to those of the common 
species; and its flowers are produced on short 
footstalks from the bosom of the leaves at the: 
upper part of the stem, have a pale bluish colour, 
and bloom in August and September. 
Two of the other introduced species are decidu- 
ous perennial herbs, two are tuberous-rooted, one 
is an annual, and all the rest are evergreen herbs, 
either erect or trailing; the greater number are 
more or less tender, nearly all have blue flowers, 
and all, with one exception, are very decidedly 
ornamental. One of their chief favourites is the 
sky-blue species, C. celestvs, an erect, evergreen 
herb, of about 20 inches in height, introduced in 
1813. This requires greenhouse or even hothouse 
treatment in winter, but does well in either beds, 
masses, or single plants, in the open border dur-. 
ing summer ; and it can easily be so managed, by 
successive sowings, and by the forcing of its roots, 
as to afford an uninterrupted series of bloom 
throughout the year. 
Ie 
| class Syngenesia. 
COMPOSIT Ai. 
849 
COMMON, or Commonagce. A property in soil, 
pasture, turbary, fishery, or coppice, belonging 
not to any individual, or private party, but to 
all the inhabitants of a parish or district. A 
commonage pasture is always a wasteful disposi- 
tion of land; for, except in rare instances, it is 
neither weeded, manured, nor otherwise properly 
managed ; and it, in consequence, affords far less 
herbage for the stock fed upon it than if it were 
enclosed and regularly farmed. Commonage 
arable land is in comparatively worse condition, 
never being properly worked, or subjected to 
wise courses of cropping, or suffered to recover 
the effects of the maltreatment and exhaustion 
which they experience. The practical abolition 
of the right of commonage, no matter how ef- 
fected, is, in almost every instance, a great econ- 
omizing of land and a saving to the public; and 
when so adjusted as to appear to give the com- 
mon-holders no more than a bare equivalent for 
their property, it deals them the grand boon of de- 
liverance from a slovenly, wasteful, and execrable 
system of farming. 
COMPARETTIA. A splendid, singular, and 
recently discovered genus of plants, of the orchis 
tribe. It first became known in Britain in 1836; 
and three species of it were introduced before 
1841, two from Peru, and the other from Mexico. 
It has the unique structure of the labellum being 
prolonged in the form of two spurs, formed by 
the united pair of lateral sepals; and it thus pre- | 
sents the same peculiarity among the orchides 
which the larkspur genus exhibits among the 
ranunculaceze. The pseudo-bulbs of the scarlet 
species, Comparettia coccinea, are small; its leaves 
are narrow, thick, leathery, oblique at the apex, 
green above, and purple or pink below; its ra- 
cemes are terminal and subsecund; its peduncle 
is slender, and furnished with a few small scales 
or bracts; and its perigone is ringent, and has 
the lip obcordate, spreading, slightly notched at 
the margin, and provided with two plates at the 
base. 
COMPOSIT. A, or Composite-FLowEReD PLaNts. 
A most extensive and very important natural 
order of plants, coextensive with the Linnean 
Each of its flowers is literaliy 
compound, or has'a number of florets enclosed 
in a common perianth, and arranged on a com- 
mon receptacle, or produced in involucrated heads 
or calathidia; and the flowers of very many of 
the genera, like those of the daisy or the dande- 
lion, have a rayed or stellate appearance. The 
number of genera in the order is about 300, and 
the number of species wild or cultivated in Bri- 
tain very nearly 3,000, and rather more than two- 
thirds of all the latter consist of hardy herbaceous 
plants. The Linnzean system distributes the com- 
posite, under the name of syngenesious plants, 
into the five orders equalis, superflua, frustra- 
nea, necessaria, and segregata; and some of the 
most recent modifications of the Jussieuan sys- 
tem distribute them into the nine great divisions 
3 
