Mons. L'HERITIER, the celebrated French Botanist, who in the number, elegance, and accuracy of his engravings, appears ambitious of excelling all his contemporaries, in a work now executing on the family of _Geranium_, has thought it necessary to divide that numerous genus into three, viz. _Erodium_, _Pelargonium_, and _Geranium_.
The _Erodium_ includes those which LINNÆUS (who noticing the great difference in their appearance, had made three divisions of them) describes with five fertile stamina, and calls Myrrhina; the _Pelargonium_ those with seven fertile stamina, his _Africana_; the _Geranium_, those with ten fertile stamina, his _Batrachia_.
They are continued under the class _Monadelphia_, in which they now form three different orders, according to the number of their stamina, viz. _Pentandria_, _Heptandria_, and _Decandria_. If the principles of the Linnæan system had been strictly adhered to, they should perhaps have been separated into different classes; for though the _Pelargonium_ is Monadelphous, the _Geranium_ is not so; in consequence of this alteration, the _Geranium peltatum_ and _radula_, figured in a former part of this work, must now be called _Pelargonium peltatum_, and _radula_, and the _Geranium Reichardi_ be an _Erodium_.
The leaves of this plant have somewhat the taste of sorrel, whence its name, it flowers during most of the summer, and is readily propagated by cuttings. MILLER mentions a variety of it with scarlet flowers.
It is a native of the Cape, and known to have been cultivated in Chelsea Garden, in the year 1724.
LYSIMACHIA BULBIFERA. BULB-BEARING LOOSESTRIFE.
_Corolla_ rotata. _Capsula_ globosa, mucronata, 10-valvis.
LYSIMACHIA _stricta_ racemis terminalibus, petalis lanceolatis patulis, foliis lanceolatis sessilibus. _Hort. Kew. p. 199._
In the spring of the year 1781, I received roots of this plant from Mr. ROBERT SQUIBB, then at New-York, which produced flowers the ensuing summer, since that time, I have had frequent opportunities of observing a very peculiar circumstance in its oeconomy; after flowering, instead of producing seeds, it throws out _gemmæ vivaces_, or _bulbs_ of an unusual form, from the alæ of the leaves, which falling off in the month of October, when the plant decays, produce young plants the ensuing spring.