Order 112. HÆMODORÀCEÆ. (Bloodwort Family.)
Herbs, with fibrous roots, usually equitant leaves, and perfect 3–6-androus regular flowers, which are woolly or scurfy outside; the tube of the 6-lobed perianth coherent with the whole surface, or with merely the lower part, of the 3-celled ovary.—Anthers introrse. Style single, sometimes 3-partible; the 3 stigmas alternate with the cells of the ovary. Capsule crowned or enclosed by the persistent perianth, 3-celled, loculicidal, 3–many-seeded. Embryo small, in hard or fleshy albumen. A small family; chiefly of the southern hemisphere.
[*] Ovary wholly adherent to the calyx-tube; style filiform; seeds peltate, amphitropous.
1. Lachnanthes. Stamens 3, exserted; anthers versatile. Leaves equitant.
[*][*] Ovary free except at the base; style 3-partible; seeds anatropous.
2. Lophiola. Stamens 6, on the base of the woolly 6-cleft perianth. Leaves equitant.
3. Aletris. Stamens 6, in the throat of the warty-roughened and tubular 6-toothed perianth. Leaves flat, spreading.
1. LACHNÁNTHES, L. Red-root.
Perianth woolly outside, 6-parted down to the adherent ovary. Stamens 3, opposite the 3 larger or inner divisions; filaments long, exserted; anthers linear, fixed by the middle. Style thread-like, exserted, declined. Capsule globular. Seeds few on each fleshy placenta, flat and rounded, fixed by the middle.—Herb, with a red fibrous perennial root, equitant sword-shaped leaves, clustered at the base and scattered on the stem, which is hairy at the top and terminated by a dense compound cyme of dingy yellow and loosely woolly flowers (whence the name, from λάχνη, wool, and ἄνθος, blossom).
1. L. tinctòria, Ell.—Sandy swamps, near the coast, S. E. Mass., R. I., and N. J. to Fla. July–Sept.