ORDER CLXXXIX.—HYPOXIDEÆ.
Bulbous-rooted plants, with long narrow leaves covered with soft downy hairs, and rather small yellow flowers, which are frequently fragrant.
ORDER CXC.—AMARYLLIDACEÆ.
A large order of genera, all of which have bulbous roots, and most of them splendid flowers. Some of the most interesting genera are—Amaryllis, Nerine (the Guernsey Lily), Brunsvigia, Hæmanthus, Crinum, Pancratium, Narcissus, Galanthus (the Snowdrop), Leucojum, Alstrœmeria, and Doryanthes. The different kinds of Amaryllis have large lily-like flowers, divided into six equal segments, which are joined into a tube below, with six stamens, the anthers of which are turned towards the pistil, and a long style crowned with a simple stigma. The ovary is beneath the other parts of the flower, to which it serves as a receptacle; and in most of the plants it looks like a small green calyx below the perianth. The leaves are very long, but they are rather thick and fleshy, and their edge is not turned towards the stem. In Narcissus, Pancratium, and some other genera, the flowers have a kind of cup within the perianth, formed of the filaments of abortive stamens grown together. In Pancratium, the filaments of the anther-bearing stamens grow into the others, so as to form a part of the cup, the anthers springing from the margin of it; but in Narcissus, the fertile stamens are distinct. In Galanthus, and its allied genera, the anthers open by pores, as in the Ericaceæ, and there is a kind of receptacle on the germen, in which the petals, and sepals, and the filaments of the stamens, are inserted.
ORDER CXCI.—HEMEROCALLIDEÆ.
This order, which included the Day Lilies (Hemerocallis and Funkia), the African Lily (Agapanthus), the Aloe (Aloë), the Tuberose (Polianthes), with several other genera which have their flowers in upright racemes or umbels, is now generally considered to form a section of the order Liliaceæ.
ORDER CXCII.—DIOSCOREÆ.