f f
[ 20 5 J
F R A N K E N I A lsevis.
Smooth Sea-Heath.
HE X A N D R I A Monogynia.
Gen. Char. £?«/. 5-clefc, funnel-lhaped. Petals 5.
Stigmas 3. of one cell, with 3 valves.
S eec. Char. Leaves linear, cluttered., ciliated at the
bafe.
Syn. Frankenia lasvis. Linn. Sp. P I. 4 7 3 . Hudf. FI.
An. 1 3 7 . With. Bot. Arr. 36 7 . Relb. Cant. 13 5 .
Lychnis fupina maritima E r ic $ facie. R a il Syn. 338 .
A NATIVE of muddy fait marlhes, more efpecially on our
eaflern coafts. Mr. Lilly Wigg fent it from Yarmouth. It is
perennial, and flowers after midfummer.
Root woody. Stems procumbent, round, branched. Leaves
in little cluflers, fmall, fucculent, linear, or rather lanceolate
and revolute, dilated at the bafe into a pair of minute, membranous,
ciliated ftipulse. Flowers moftly at the divarications
of the branches, rarely terminal, folitary, feflile, delicate and
elegant in form and colour, like thofe of a little red pink or
campion. Calyx with 5 (rarely more) teeth, angular. Neftary
a yellow fcale attached to the claw of each petal. Stamina and
Piflillum much refembling thofe of the Lychnis tribe, to which
the plant before us is nearly allied, though fo different from
mofl of them in habit.
This genus was firft determined by Micheli, who named it
Franca after his friend Franchi, a Florentine phyfician and
botanift, born at Lucca, who had a principal hand in founding
the Botanical Society of Florence. It Ihould feem that Linnseus
did not think this gentleman’s claims to fuch an honour fufh-
cient, and therefore changed the name to Frankenia, to perpetuate
the memory of Frankenius, profeffor at Upfal in the
middle of laft century, author of a not very ufeful catalogue
of plants called Speculum botanicum, of which there are 2 editions,
both at prefent very rare.