2. In all the varieties of Pinguicula, each blossom has one stalk only,
growing from the _ground_ and you may pull all the leaves away from the
base of it, and keep the flower only, with its bunch of short fibrous
roots, half an inch long; looking as if bitten at the ends. Two flowers,
characteristically,--three and four very often,--spring from the same root,
in places where it grows luxuriantly; and luxuriant growth means that
clusters of some twenty or thirty stars may be seen on the surface of a
square yard of boggy ground, quite to its mind; but its real glory is in
harder life, in the crannies of well-wetted rock.
3. What I have called 'stars' are irregular clusters of approximately, or
tentatively, five aloeine ground leaves, of very pale green,--they may be
six or seven, or more, but always run into a rudely pentagonal arrangement,
essentially first trine, with two succeeding above. Taken as a whole the
_plant_ is really a main link between violets and Droseras; but the
_flower_ has much more violet than Drosera in the make of it,--spurred, and
_five-petaled_,[11] and held down by the top of its bending stalk as a
violet is; only its upper two petals are not reverted--the calyx, of a dark
soppy green, holding them down, with its three front sepals set exactly
like a strong trident, its two backward sepals clasping the spur. There are
often six sepals, four to the front, but the normal number is five.
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