Herbs, shrubs, or trees, with alternate stipulate leaves, and regular flowers. The petals (mostly 5) and stamens (mostly more than 10) inserted on the edge of a disk which lines the calyx-tube. (See Part L, sections 48 to 57, for typical flowers.)

Synopsis Of The Genera

Suborder Amygdaleae

Carpel solitary, becoming a drupe, entirely free from the calyx, the latter deciduous. Ovules 2, but seed solitary as a rule. Trees or shrubs with simple leaves and deciduous stipules.

1. Pru'nus. Flowers perfect. Petals and calyx-lobes 5. Fruit a drupe.

Suborder Rosaceae

Carpels few or many, free from the persistent calyx, becoming achenes, follicles, or drupe-like in fruit.

2. Spirae'a. Carpels mostly 5, forming follicles in fruit. Calyx 5-cleft, short. Petals obovate, similar.

3. Gille'nia. Carpels and fruit as in Spiraea. Calyx elongated, 5toothed. Petals slender, dissimilar.

4. Agrinio'nia. Carpels 2, forming achenes enclosed in the hardened calyx-tube. Calyx armed with hooked bristles. Flowers yellow, in slender spikes.

5. Alchemil'la. Carpels 1-4, forming achenes enclosed in the persistent calyx-tube. Petals none. Stamens 1-4. Calyx-tube inversely conical, the limb 4-parted, with 4 alternating bractlets. Low herbs, with palmately-lobed leaves.

6. Poterium. Carpels 1-3. Achene (mostly solitary) enclosed in the dry 4-angled closed calyx-tube. Petals none. Lobes of the top-shaped calyx 4, petal-like, spreading. Stigma tufted. Tall herbs, with pinnate leaves and a dense white spike of small flowers, often polygamous or dioecious.

7. Geum. Carpels numerous, one-ovuled, becoming dry achenes, the persistent styles becoming tails, plumose or naked, and straight or jointed. Calyx-lobes with 5 alternating bractlets.

8. Waldstei'nia. Carpels 2-6, forming achenes. Leaves radical, of 3 wedge-form leaflets. Bractlets of the calyx minute and deciduous. Flowers yellow, on bracted scapes.

9. Potentil'la. Carpels numerous, forming achenes heaped on a dry receptacle, the styles not forming tails. Lobes of the calyx with 5 alternating bractlets.

10. Chamae'rhodos. Carpels 5-10, on a dry receptacle. Petals white, obovate. Stamens 5, opposite the petals. Calyx campanulate, 5-cleft. Small glandular-pubescent herbs with flowers in forked cymes, and many-cleft leaves.

11. Fragaria. Flowers as in Potentilla, but receptacle becoming fleshy or pulpy and scarlet in fruit. (See Part I., sec. 235.) Leaves all radical, of 3 leaflets. Low plants, producing runners.

12. Dalibar'da, Carpels 5-10, each 2-ovuled, forming nearly dry drupelets. Calyx 5-6-parted, 3 of the divisions larger than the others, and toothed. Calyx without bracts, persistent, enclosing the fruit. Leaves radical, round heart-shaped. Flowers white, on scapes.

13. Rubus. Carpels numerous, 2-ovuled, forming drupelets heaped on the receptacle. (See Part I., section 234.) Fruit edible. Calyx without bracts.

14. Rosa. Carpels numerous, 1-ovuled, forming achenes enclosed in the fleshy calyx-tube. (See Part I., section 49.)