In hawk-weed, sow-thistle, and the japan rose, you will find it imbricated; in the thistles scaly ; not unfrequently it is armed with spines; and it is divided and cleft in innumerable ways.

It is coloured, or of a different hue from green, in azalea, in the pomegranate, barberry, flowering sallow, marsh cinquefoil, Japan apple, and many others, with none of which perhaps you are so familiar as with the scarlet fuchsia, (Fuchsia coccinea), which is now very common in gardens and greenhouses. It is a native of Chili, and was introduced into England in 1788. When you look into the heart of the flower, you see lying within it a beautiful little cup of a bright purple colour; this is the real corolla consisting of four petals, while the large, monophyllous, quadripartite, or fourcleft scarlet covering that surrounds it is nothing more than a coloured perianth. In the Carolina Allspice, (Calycanthus floridus), the perianth is composed of one leaflet divided into many scales, the inner ones of considerable size, and the whole of a deep rich purple-brown colour, exactly resembling

petals. The plant however has no corolla; what to a common eye appears as such being the perianth.

The radiated marginal scales of the imbricated common calyx in the everlasting flowers, are in many species finely coloured, and as they are dry and chaffy, they resemble beautiful fresh flowers many years after they are gathered. They are particularly plentiful at the Cape of Good Hope, whence they are often sent as curiosities to Europe. Some species are much used for ornamenting children's toys.

Sometimes the perianth is bellied out like a bubble of air, as in the bladder-campion, the wintercherry, and the yellow rattle of our meadows.

A circumstance takes place in the thorn-apple (DATURA) which I do not recollect to occur in any other plant. Its perianth is deciduous, but not in toto; the greater part drops off, but leaves an orbicular portion at the base, attached to the fruit;

PERIANTH OF THORN-APPLE.

191

as at Fig. 60. where (a) represents the corolla and calyx entire, and (b) the young fruit with a portion of the calyx continuing attached to its base.

We have now paid some attention to the PERIANTH, which is the first of Linnæus's species of Calyx, after which he enumerates six others; the INVOLUCRUM, AMENTUM, SPATHA, GLUMA, CALYPTRA, and VOLVA.

INVOLUCRUM, (involvo, to wrap up, Lat.), a calyx remote from the flower. It therefore is not a legitimate calyx, though considered as such, because it is required to distinguish the genera of a very large natural order of plants, the Umbellifera. The characters of genera are properly always taken from the parts of fructification, and in order not to depart from that rule, the involucrum is admitted as a species of calyx. We shall defer its consideration till, in describing the modes of flowering, we treat of the umbel.

*

The AMENTUM, or catkin, and the SPATHA, or sheath, are certainly improperly considered as species of Calyx, and we shall consider them as kinds of inflorescence. The CALYPTRA, or veil, is peculiar to the MOSSES; and the VOLVA, or wrapper, to the FUNGI.

* It is in reality a bractea, and will soon, probably, be altogether discarded as a part necessary for establishing the genera of the umbellatæ. Sir J. E. Smith has characterised them " by the parts of fructification alone, according to the wise principles taught by Linnæus, but against which he himself, in this instance transgressed.". English Flora, vol, ii. p. 32.

The GLUME, or calyx, of grasses; and the SQUAMA, or scale, which is the real calyx in amentaceous plants, are the only others to be mentioned. The latter will be described along with the amentum. GLUMA, the glume, (gluma, the husk of corn, Lat.) The part of oats called chaff, and which is thrown away as useless, is what forms the calyx or glume.

In the oat it is composed of two pieces or valves, Fig. 61.; in some grasses, as ray grass, only of one; and in the Uniola, or sea-side oat, it is multivalve. Often it is armed or bearded.

Fig. 61.

Before describing the Corolla we shall attend a little to the Peduncle, or flower-stalk; PEDUNCULUS, (pedo, to prop or support, Lat.). The same terms which have been applied to the petiole are in general also applicable to the Peduncle. Like the former it may be radical, cauline, or from a branch; it may be axillary, or terminal; solitary,. or in clusters; placed in a determinate order; or situated without method, here and there upon the plant. In herbaceous vegetables it not unfrequently rises. from the main stem, but in trees this is unusual,

though some instances occur, as in the Bilimbi-tree (Averrhoa Bilimbi), and the Jaca, or Jac, (Artocarpus integrifolia,) a species of bread-fruit, native of the East Indies. The fruit of the latter tree is of immense size, and perhaps the intention of nature in making the peduncle cauline, is to save the branches, which might suffer by the weight of this enormous fruit, or be unable to support it.

When the Peduncle, as often happens, divides into smaller ones, the latter are called Pedicels (PEDICELLI). The flowers are connected by the peduncle to the plant in various ways, which by the older botanists was termed the mode of flowering (modus florendi), but by Linnæus the inflorescence (INFLORESCENTIA). It is of the following kinds :UMBELLA, an umbel (umbella, a fan or screen, Lat.).

The stems of many plants terminate in a number of rays, nearly all of equal length, somewhat like the spokes of an umbrella. Fig. 62.

Fig. 62.

"This is the largest fruit I think in the world; and because of its bigness, provident nature has placed its growth on the stock or body of the tree; not on the branches, lest it should not be able to bear the burthen."-Baron's Description of Tonqueen.

K