Floral envelopes consisting of both calyx and corolla; the petals not united with each other. (Several genera or species belonging to Polypetalous Orders are destitute of petals, or have them more or less united.)
Order 1. RANUNCULÀCEÆ. (Crowfoot Family.)
Herbs or some woody plants, with a colorless and usually acrid juice, polypetalous, or apetalous with the calyx often colored like a corolla, hypogynous; the sepals, petals, numerous stamens, and many or few (rarely single) pistils all distinct and unconnected.—Flowers regular or irregular. Sepals 3–15. Petals 3–15, or wanting. Stamens indefinite, rarely few. Fruits either dry pods, or seed-like (achenes), or berries. Seeds anatropous (when solitary and suspended the rhaphe dorsal), with hard albumen and a minute embryo.—Leaves often dissected, their stalks dilated at the base, sometimes with stipule-like appendages. (A large family, including some acrid-narcotic poisons.)
Synopsis of the Genera.
Tribe I. CLEMATIDEÆ. Sepals normally 4, petal-like, valvate in the bud, or with the edges bent inward. Petals none, or small. Achenes numerous, tailed with the feathery or hairy styles. Seed suspended.—Leaves all opposite.
1. Clematis. Climbing by the leafstalks, or erect herbs.
Tribe II. ANEMONEÆ. Sepals 3–20, often petal-like, imbricated in the bud. Stamens mostly numerous. Achenes numerous or several, in a head or spike.—Herbs, never climbing; leaves alternate, or radical, the upper sometimes opposite or whorled.
[*] Petals none (rarely some staminodia). Seed suspended.
[+] All but the lower leaves opposite or whorled. Peduncles 1-flowered.
2. Anemone. Involucre leaf-like, remote from the flower. Leaves compound or dissected. Pistils very many.