[ 1579 ]
LYCHNIS dioica: flore rubro.
Red Campion.
DECANDRIA Pentagynia.
Gen. Char. Cal. of 1 leaf, oblong. Petals 5 , with
claws ; their limb mostly divided. Caps, superior,
opening with 5 teeth, of 1 or 5 cells.
S p e c . C h a r . Flowers dioecious. Fruit of one cell.
S y n . Lychnis dioica. Linn. Sp. P I. 626. Sm. F I.
B rit. 4 9 5 . Huds. 199. JVith. 4 3 1 . Abbot. 1 0 1 .
«. Flowers red.
L. dioica. Curt. L o n d .fa sc. 2 . t. 32. H ull. 10 0 .
L. diuma. Sibth. 145 . Sym. 1 1 2 j
L. sylvestris rubello flore. R a ii Syn. 339. Ger.
em. 469.
S o m e t im e s it happens that plants which every one well
knows at first sight, are attended with much difficulty in their
botanical characters, as is the case with the common Red and
White Campions, both comprehended by Linnseus under his
Lychnis dioica. We shall endeavour to illustrate them in this
and the following plate.
The Red Campion is common under hedges and in other
shady and rather moist places, flowering copiously in the
spring, and occasionally, when it has been accidentally cropped
at an early period, its flowers are observable here and there
throughout the summer. The root is perennial and tapering.
Herb clothed with fine soft prominent hairs, and somewhat
viscid. Stem upright but weak, round, jointed, leafy, about
J 8 inches or 2 feet high, terminating in a forked spreading
panicle. Leaves ovate, soft, acute, entire. Flowers on
partial stalks, with somewhat membranous bracteas. Calyx
dark red ; in the male flowers tubular; in the female (which
are on distinct and stronger plants) ovate; in both 10-ribbed,
without intermediate veins. Petals rose-coloured, with whitish
claws and 4-cleft crown, the limb cloven, and sometimes
having 2 slight lateral lobes. The flowers have no smell.
They are often seen double in gardens. There is a pale
variety in which the stamina and pistilla are sometimes, not
always, together in the same flower.