Stalk about three feet high, much branched, shrubby, round, the
young wood green, with a tinge of purple toward the lower part of
each joint, slightly viscid, as it becomes older changing to a light
brown colour, and discovering manifest fissures; branches alternately
opposite, flower-bearing quite to the base; leaves opposite, sessile,
slightly connate, ovato-lanceolate, somewhat blunt at the extremity,
this bluntness is particularly apparent when contrasted with a leaf
of the _ringens_, toothed or slightly sawed on the edge, smooth,
veiny; flowers inodorous, large, nearly twice the size of those of
the _ringens_, uniformly pale orange, growing in pairs from the alæ
of the leaves, standing on footstalks about half the length of the
calyx; calyx five-angled and five-toothed, tube of the flower within
the calyx, narrow, cylindrical, pale yellow, bent a little downward,
gradually expanding, and dividing into two lips, the upper lip divided
into two, the lower lip into three segments, all of them irregular,
the two uppermost very much so; at the base of the middle segment of
the lower lip are two prominent ridges, of a somewhat deeper colour;
stamina four, two long, two short; antheræ deep orange, cruciform,
within the flower; stigma white, two-lip'd, lips closed or expanded
according to its age; style filiform; germen oblong; at the base of the
germen is a gland of considerable size which secretes much honey.
This plant flowers during most of the Summer, and is increased by
cuttings. We know not with certainty of what country it is a native.
[355]
OENOTHERA PUMILA. DWARF OENOTHERA.
_Class and Order._
OCTANDRIA MONOGYNIA.
_Generic Character._
_Cal._ 4-fidus. _Petala_ 4. _Caps._ cylindrica infera. _Sem._
nuda.
_Specific Character and Synonyms._
OENOTHERA _pumila_ foliis lanceolatis obtusis glabris
subpetiolatis, caulibus prostratis, capsulis acutangulis.
_Linn. Syst. Vegetab. ed. 14. Murr. p. 358. Ait. Kew. v. 2. p.
4._
OENOTHERA foliis radicalibus ovatis caulinis lanceolatis
obtusis, capsulis ovatis obtusis. _Mill. Ic. t. 188._
LYSIMACHIA siliquosa glabra minor mariana angustioribus
foliis. _Pluk. Mant. 123._
[Illustration: _N^o. 355_]
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