Copy 2, Volume 3

The English flora / By Sir James Edward Smith.

  • Smith, James Edward, 1759-1828.
Date:
1824-1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The English flora / By Sir James Edward Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stalks, small and inconspicuous ; the tube, wpper lip, and very short spur purplish ; lower lip white, with a yellow palate. Caps. ovate, oblique, each cell opening by 3 or 4 short blunt teeth. Seeds ovate, strongly furrowed, with compressed, prominent, intermediate ribs. The wooden cuts of this species, in the old authors, greatly excel the engraving of Rivinus, which is not accurate in the flowers. *** Corolla without a prominent spur. *7. A. majus. Great Snapdragon. Corolla with a rounded prominence at the base. Flowers in a dense cluster. Leaves lanceolate. Segments of the calyx ovate, obtuse. A. majus. Linn. Sp. Pl. 859. Willd.v. 3.256. Fl. Br. 661. Engl. Bot. v.2.4.129. Hook. Scot.189. Bull, Fr, t. 277. A. n. 333. Hall, Hist.o. 1.144, Antirrhinum. Riv. Monop. Irr, t. 82.f.1. Dod. Pempt.182.f. Lob. Ic. 404. f. A. purpureum sive album. Ger. Em. 549. f. A. primum et secundum. Maitth. Valgr.v.2.537,538.f,f. Ca- mer. Epit. 920, 921. f,f. On old walls, and chalk cliffs, but supposed not to be indigenous. Perennial. July, August. Stem branched, leafy, more or less downy and viscid, of a shrubby habit, but generally destroyed by the winter’s cold, as is often the root itself. Leaves opposite or alternate on the same plant, somewhat stalked, lanceolate, acute, recurved, entire, smooth ; dark green on the upper side; paler beneath. Fl. large and showy, rose-coloured or white, with a large, yellow, downy pa- late white in front. They form dense clusters, beset with ovate bracteas. Cal. downy and viscid, in 5 ovate, concave, unequal segments. Cor. near 14 inch long, with a short round pouch at the base on the lower side. Cups. ovate, of 2 oblique cells ; the lowermost, or larger, protuberant at the base, opening at the top by 2 large pores, each bordered with 3 broad, short, spreading valves ; the upper cell with a single orifice, crowned with a three-cleft valve. Seeds black, much wrinkled. The whole capsule has been compared to the skull of a calf; but the old name, Calf’s-snout, rather applies to the mouth of the co- rolla. A fine deep crimson variety is common in gardens, and another with a white tube and crimson lips, but these run into each other on the same root. A rude figure of this Aniirrhinum, but which cannot be mistaken, exists in the famous Vienna manuscript of Dioscorides, under the name of Kuvoxegaasoy, or Dog’s-head, and is engraved in Diose, Ic, t.. 103.