ONAGRACEAE  , in

botany, an order of dicotyledons belonging to the series Myrtiflorae, to which belongs also the myrtle order, Myrtaceae . It contains about 36 genera and 300 species, and occurs chiefly in the temperate. zone of the New World, especially on the Pacific side . It is represented in Britain by several species of Epilobium (willow-herb), Circaea (enchanter's nightshade), and Ludwigia, a small perennial herb very rare in boggy pools in Sussex and Hampshire . The plants are generally herbaceous, sometimes annual, as species of Epilobium, Clarkia, Godetia, or biennial, as Oenothera biennis—evening primrose—or sometimes become shrubby or arborescent, as Fuchsia (q.v.) . The simple leaves are generally entire or inconspicuously toothed, and are alternate, opposite or whorled in arrangement; they are generally exstipulate, but small caducous stipules occur in Fuchsia, Circaea and other genera . The flowers are often solitary in the leaf-axils, as in many fuchsias, Clarkia, &c., or associated, as in Epilobium and Oenothera, in large showy terminal spikes or racemes; in Circaea the small white or red 1 He is said to have reigned seven days, but the LXX . (B) in 1 Kings xvi . 15 read seven years . Further confusion is caused by the fact that the LXX. reads Zimri throughout for Omri . flowers are borne in terminal and lateral racemes . The regular flowers have the parts in fours, the typical arrangement as illustrated by Epilobium, Oenothera and Fuchsia being as follows: 4 sepals, 4 petals, two alternating whorls of 4 stamens, and 4 inferior carpels . The floral receptacle is produced above the ovary into the so-called calyx-tube, which is often petaloid, as in Fuchsia, and is sharply distinguished from the ovary, from which it separates of ter flowering .

In Clarkia the inner whorl of stamens is often barren, and in an allied genus, Eucharidium, it is absent . In Circaea the

flower has its parts 0 r, Flower cut open after removal of of Circaea. sepals; 2, fruit; 3, floral diagram . in twos . Both sepals and petals are free; the former have a broad insertion, are valvate in bud, and reflexed in the flower; in Fuchsia they are petaloid . The petals have a narrow attachment, and are generally convolute in bud; they are entire (Fuchsia) or bilobed (Epilobium); in some species of Fuchsia they are small and scale-like, or absent (F. apetala) . The stamens are free, and those of the inner whorl are generally shorter than those of the outer whorl . The flowers of Lopezia (Central America) have only one fertile stamen . The large spherical pollen grains are connected by viscid threads . The typically quadrilocular ovary contains numerous ovules on axile placentas; the 1-to-2-celled ovary of Circaea has a single sa. ovule in each loculus . The long slender style has a capitate (Fuchsia), 4-rayed (Oenothera, Epilobium) or 4-notched (Cir- caea) stigma . The flowers, which have generally an at- tractive corolla and honey secreted by a swollen disk at the base of the style or on the lower part of the " calyx-tube," are adapted for pollination by insects, chiefly bees and lepi- doptera; sometimes by night- flying insects when the flowers are pale and open towards evening, as in evening primrose . The fruit is generally a capsule splitting into 4 valves and leaving a central column on which the seeds are borne as in Epilobium and Oenothera- in the former the seeds are scattered by aid of a long tuft of silky hairs on the broader end .

In Fuchsia the fruit is a

berry, which is sometimes edible, and in Circaea a nut bearing recurved bristles . The seeds are exalbuminous . Several of the genera are well known as garden plants, e.g . Fuchsia, Oenothera, Clarkia and Godetia . Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis), a native of North America, occurs apparently wild as a garden escape in Britain . Jussieua is a tropical genus of water- and marsh-herbs with well-developed aerating tissue .