The British Flora: Comprising the Phaenogamous, Or Flowering Plants, and the Ferns

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Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, 1830 - Botany - 480 pages

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Page 72 - O READER ! hast thou ever stood to see The holly tree? The eye that contemplates it well, perceives Its glossy leaves Ordered by an intelligence so wise As might confound the atheist's sophistries. Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen Wrinkled and keen; No grazing cattle, through their prickly round, Can reach to wound ; But as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.
Page 243 - In some species of the former the stem is upright, or merely curved at the top ; but in the greater number it is either prostrate, or, as is more generally the case, assurgent, arched, and decurved ; and the ends of the shoot and of the side branches, if it produce any, unless prevented by circumstances from reaching the ground, take root in the latter part of the year. In the winter the shoot is partially destroyed, the part next to the original root surviving to produce flowering branches during...
Page 409 - It hath formerly built a good part of our ancient houses in the City of London, as does yet appear : I had once a very large barn near the City...
Page 283 - One or two feet high, glabrous, often much branched, and more or less spotted with purple. Leaves veiny. Flowers axillary in the upper leaves or bracteat, and hence loosely spiked.
Page 129 - Name, Cicuta was a term given by the Latins to those spaces between the joints of a reed of which their pipes •were made: and the stem of this plant is similarly marked by hollow articulations.
Page 151 - Like pendent flakes of vegetating snow, The early herald of the infant year, Ere yet the adventurous crocus dares to blow Beneath the orchard boughs thy buds appear.
Page 122 - Seed tereti-convex ; axis none. — Universal involucre various, partial of many leaves. Flowers of the ray on long pedicels, • sterile ; those of the disk sessile or shortly pedicellate, fertile. • — Name from oo-ij, a vine, and avBos, a flower, alluding to the vinous smell of the blossoms.
Page 243 - The rooted ends also become distinct plants at various distances from the parent root, often many yards. This mode of growth adds much to the difficulties in the discrimination of the species ; since an acquaintance with both the leafy shoot and the floriferous stem, formed in the second year from its remains, is necessary. The best characters are found in the figure, the arms, and the leaves of the former. The leaves in all the British species of this division are, occasionally at least, quinate,...
Page 141 - Leaves ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, doubly and evenly crenateserrate, cuneate and oblique at the base, becoming quite smooth above, smooth or glandular beneath, with a few hairs in the axillae. Branches bright brown, smooth, wiry, weeping. Fruit obovate, naked, deeply cloven.
Page 283 - But to nobler sights Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed, Which that false fruit, that promised clearer sight, Had bred ; then purged with euphrasy and rue The visual nerve, for he had much to see, And from the well of life three drops instill'd.

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