POLYANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Many Chives. One Pointal.
ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER.
Corolla polypetala. Calyx 4-s. 5-phyllus. Bacca multilocularis, loculis polyspermis.
Blossom many-petaled. Empalement 4-or 5-leaved. Berry many-celled, with many seeds in each cell.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER, &C.
Nymphæa, foliis cordatis dentatis glaberrimis lobis approximatis, calyce tetraphyllo. Willd. Sp. Pl. 2. 1153.
Nymphæa, with heart-shaped dentated very smooth leaves, with the lobes approximated, and a four-leaved empalement.
REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.
1. The seed-bud and pointal. 2. A chive. 3. A transverse section of the seed-bud. 4. A capsule.
There can be no doubt, but that the plant here figured is the true “Nymphæa Lotus” of Linnæus, and that it is the plant mentioned by Pliny in Nat. Hist. lib. 13. cap. 17. and lib. 22. cap. 21. He there makes mention of a plant which is found at the ebbing of the Nile, the fruit of which resembles a poppy, and the seed of the size of millet: this exactly answers to the “Nymphæa” before us, and does not at all apply to the “Nelumbium,” the kernels of which are of the size of nuts or thereabouts: he also remarks that the heads are dried by the natives, and that the seed is beat and broken and made into bread.—Herodotus also mentions that the Egyptians baked the seed into bread, and ate of the roots, or rather tubercles, which resembled an apple and had an agreeable flavour. Vide Euterpe 92—Melpomene 177.