Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/455

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DODECANDRIA.
425

genus as to stamens and styles, which therefore afford good marks to discriminate the species.


Class 11. Dodecandria. Stamens 12 to 19. Orders 6.

1. Monogynia. A rather numerous and very various order, with scarcely any natural affinity between the genera. Some of them have twelve, others, fifteen or more stamens, which should be mentioned in their characters. Asarum, Engl. Bot. t. 1083, and the handsome Lythrum Salicaria, t. 1061, also the American Snow-drop-tree, Halesia, not rare in our gardens, may serve as examples of this order. Sterculia is very properly removed hither from Gynandria by Schreber and Willdenow, as its stamens are not inserted above the germen.

2. Digynia consists of Heliocarpus, a very rare American tree with a singularly fringed or radiated fruit; and Agrimonia, Engl. Bot. t. 1335. The latter might as well have been placed in the next class, with which it agrees in natural order.