SHERARDIA arvenfis.
B lu e Sherardia.
TETRANDRIA Monogynia.
G en. C har. Cor. o f 1 petal, funnel-fhaped, fuperior.
Seeds 2, each crowned with 3 teeth.
Sp e c . C har. All the leaves whorled. Flowers
terminal.
Syn . Sherardia arvenfis. Linn. Sp. PI. I4 9 -
Brit. 171. Hudf. 66. With. 185. Hull. 37.
Relb. 63. Sibtb. 57. Jbbot. 32. Curt. Lond.
fajc. 5. t. 13. Dickf.H. Sicc.fafc. 15. 1.
Rubeola arvenfis repens cserulea. Raii Syn. 225.
T H E Sherardia, or Little Field Madder, as it has been commonly
called, though it has neither the charafter nor properties
of Madder, is frequent in fallow fields, and indeed even among
growing corn, more particularly on a light or gravelly foil,
flowering throughout the fummer.
The root is fibrous and annual. Herb generally hairy.
Stems feveral, branched, leafy, angular, fpreading in every
direction. Leaves about 6 .in each whorl, elliptical or obovate,
pointed, entire, rougheft on the edges and keel, fpreading.
Flowers in a fmall terminal umbel enveloped with the upper-
moft whorl, which generally confifts of 7 or 8 leaves. Calyx
fuperior, of 2 trifid permanent leaves, at length forming a
crown to the fruit. Corolla purplifh-blue, with a {lender tube
gently tapering to the bafe, and a regular four-cleft limb.
Stamina {lender, {horter than the lobes of the corolla. Fruit
of 2 dry feeds, moftly roughifli.
Dillenius certainly {howed his judgment in making this a
diftinct genus from all the other ftellate plants, and it is well
charaaerifed by the 2 trifid leaves of the calyx, a mark which
M. De Juffieu (pofiibly from an error of the prefs) feems to
have overlooked.