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Ruskin, John, 1819-1900

"Proserpina, Volume 2 Studies Of Wayside Flowers"


11. I find that in the year 1719, Tournefort defined, with exactitude which
has rendered the definition authoritative for all time, the tribe to which
this Brownie flower belongs, constituting them his fourth class, and
describing them in terms even more depreciatingly imaginative than any I
have ventured to use myself. I translate the passage (vol. i., p. 177):--
12. "The name of Labiate flower is given to a single-petaled flower which,
beneath, is attenuated into a tube, and above is expanded into a lip, which
is either single or double. It is proper to a labiate flower,--first, that
it has a one-leaved calyx (ut calycem habeat _unifolium_), for the most
part tubulated, or reminding one of a paper hood (cucullum papyraceum);
and, secondly, that its pistil ripens into a fruit consisting of four
seeds, which ripen in the calyx itself, as if in their own seed-vessel, by
which a labiate flower is distinguished from a personate one, whose pistil
becomes a capsule far divided from the calyx (a calyce longo divisam). And
a labiate flower differs from rotate, or bell-shaped flowers, which have
four seeds, in that the lips of a labiate flower have a gape like the face
of a goblin, or ludicrous mask, emulous of animal form."
13. This class is then divided into four sections.
In the first, the upper lip is helmeted, or hooked--"galeatum est, vel
falcatum."
In the second, the upper lip is excavated like a spoon--"cochlearis
instar est excavatum.


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