1. LÌNUM, Tourn. Flax.
Sepals (persistent), petals, stamens, and styles 5, regularly alternate with each other. Pod of 5 united carpels (into which it splits in dehiscence) and 5-celled, with 2 seeds hanging from the summit of each cell, which is partly or completely divided into two by a false partition projecting from the back of the carpel, the pod thus becoming 10-celled. Seeds anatropous, mucilaginous, flattened, containing a large embryo with plano-convex cotyledons.—Herbs, with tough fibrous bark, simple and sessile entire leaves (alternate or often opposite), without stipules, but often with glands in their place, and with corymbose or panicled flowers. Corolla usually ephemeral. (The classical name of the Flax.)
[*] Flowers rather small, yellow; glabrous, 1–2° high.
1. L. Virginiànum, L. Stem erect from the base and with the corymbose spreading or recurving branches terete and even; no stipular glands; leaves oblong or lanceolate, or the lower spatulate and often opposite; flowers scattered, small (barely 3´´ long); sepals ovate, pointed, smooth-edged or nearly so, equalling the depressed 10-celled pod; styles distinct.—Dry woods; common.—Root apparently annual; but the plant propagates by suckers from the base of the stem.
L. Floridànum, Trelease, of rather stricter habit and the pods broadly ovate and obtuse, appears to have been found in S. Ill.
2. L. striàtum, Walt. Stems gregarious, erect or ascending from a creeping or decumbent base, slightly viscid, and with the mostly racemose short branches striate with about 4 sharp wing-like angles decurrent from the leaves; these broader than in the last, and mostly oblong, usually with all the lower ones opposite; flowers more crowded; sepals scarcely equalling the very small subglobose brownish pod; otherwise nearly as n. 1.—Wet or boggy grounds, E. Mass. to Lakes Ontario and Huron, Ill., and southward.
3. L. sulcàtum, Riddell. Stem strictly erect from an annual root, and with the upright or ascending branches wing-angled or grooved; leaves alternate, linear, acute, the upper subulate and glandular-serrulate; a pair of dark glands in place of stipules; sepals ovate-lanceolate and sharp-pointed, strongly 3-nerved and with rough-bristly-glandular margins, scarcely longer than the ovoid-globose incompletely 10-celled pod; styles united almost to the middle.—Dry soils, E. Mass. to Minn., and southwestward.—Flowers and pods twice as large as in the preceding.
4. L. rígidum, Pursh. Glaucous, sometimes slightly puberulent, often low and cespitose, the rigid branches angled; leaves narrow, erect, usually with stipular glands; flowers large; sepals lanceolate, glandular-serrulate; styles united; capsule ovoid, 5-valved.—Minn. to Kan., and southward.
[*][*] Flowers large, blue.
5. L. perénne, L., var. Lewísii, Eat. & Wright. Perennial, glabrous and glaucous, 1–3° high; leaves linear, acute; flowers rather few on long peduncles; sepals obtuse or acutish, not glandular-serrulate; styles distinct; pod ovate.—Minn. to Neb., and westward. (Eu., Asia.)