' * [ 7^2 1
CALLITRICHE aquatica.
Water Star-wort,
MONA N D RIA Digynia.
G en, C har. Cal. none. P et. 2. Stigmas acute.
Seeds 4, comprefled, naked, with a winged margin
on one tide. Some monoecious flowers.
S pec, C har. ... . .
S yn . Callitricbe aquatica. Hudf. 439. S ilth . 2. Sm.
FI. B rit. 8. Hull, 2.
C. verna. Linn. Sp. P I. 6. With. 5. Relh. %.
Ahhot. 1.
Stellaria. Rati Syn. 289.
@. S. minor et repens. Rail Syn. 389.
Alfine paluftris ferpyl 1 ifblia. Ger. em. 614.
y . Callitriphe autumnalis. Linn. Sj>. P I. 6. With. 6.
Relh. 2, Ahhot. 2.
Stellaria aquatica, foliis longis tenuiflimis. Rail
Syn. 290,
F REQUENT and abundant in ditches, lakes, and Handing
pools, flowering from April to Oftober. It is generally fup-
pofed to be annual, floating by means of its thick-fet broad
upper leaves till the impregnation js accomplifhed; then each
flower finks, by the elongation of the top of the ftem, where
new ones are produced, and finally the whole herb fubfides to
the bottom, takes root there, ripens and fows its feeds. The
young plants foon rife to the furface, and appear to be nour-
iflied from the water by flender fimple roots, from each joint
of the flender branching ftem, which do not reach the ground
till the plant fubfides as abovementioned. The earlier leaves
are oppofite, fpatulate, entire, three-nerved; but thofe produced
in autumn, after the herb finks, are linear, fingle-nerved, and
emarginate, which occafioned the diftindtion of this one fpe-
cies into two. Flowers axillary, folitary, feffile, fmall, whitifh,
with one very long ftamen and a bivalve anthera, and a four-
lobed germen, with 2 capillary ftyles. Seeds 4, naked, fbarply
keeled. Some flowers often want the ftamen, others the germen
and ftyles; which led Mr. Hudfon to remove this genus
to the Polygamia, a clafs which if thus rigidly attended to
would fwallow up half the reft.