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74 BEAUTIFUL FLOWEBS OF KASHMIR [Plate 40<br />
racemes ;<br />
flower- stalks short, usually curved, often warty,<br />
rarely absent. Bracts small, fleshy. Calyx cleft almost to<br />
the base, segments egg-shaped, blunt. Corolla white ;<br />
tube<br />
J-i in. long, almost cylindrical, lobes short, triangular, bent<br />
back ;<br />
scales prominent, attached near the base of the corollatube,<br />
fringed. Style 1, short, stout ; stigmas large, distinct,<br />
wide apart. Capsule i-i in. diameter, globose, depressed.<br />
Seeds 2-4, large.<br />
Flowers. July, August.<br />
Locality. At elevations up to 8,000 ft.<br />
Distribution. Throughout India, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya,<br />
China.<br />
Cuscuta gigantea, Griff. Gigantic Dodder.<br />
A much more slender plant than the preceding species.<br />
Flowers in irregular clusters or short spikes, not in heads.<br />
Bracts -$f in. long, egg-shaped. Sepals xV in. long, egg-shaped,<br />
blunt. Corolla!-] in. long, cylindric ; lobes 5, erect or bent<br />
back ;<br />
scales near the base of the corolla-tube, elliptic, shortly<br />
fringed. Style short, stigmas tongue-shaped. Capsule i-^ in.<br />
long, membranous. Seeds 2, broadly rhombiform, black.<br />
Locality. At higher altitudes.<br />
Distribution. W. Himalaya, Afghanistan.<br />
POLEMONIACEAE.<br />
The Jacob's Ladder Family.<br />
(Derivation of the word Polemonion very uncertain. The name<br />
was already used by Dioscorides, but we do not know what plant he<br />
meant.<br />
over the priority of having<br />
Pliny, xxv, 28, derives the word from polemos, war, because<br />
several kings are said to have quarrelled<br />
discovered the medicinal qualities of a certain plant. Equally<br />
uncertain is the derivation from Polcmon, a king of Pontus).<br />
POLEMONIUM, Linn.<br />
Fig. 5. Polemonium coeruleum,<br />
Coventry, pi. xxxv.<br />
(Coeruleum means sky-blue.)<br />
Linn. Jacob's Ladder.<br />
A perennial herb. Stem 1-4 ft. high, erect, leafy* hairless<br />
below, glandular above. Leaves pinnate, 5 by 3 in., the<br />
lower ones long-stalked, the upper ones short-stalked, the<br />
uppermost sessile leaflets about<br />
; 27, stalkless, oblong-lanceshaped,<br />
long-pointed, oblique-rounded at the base. Flowers<br />
many, forming a corymb, often clustered, stalks glandular,
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