A small family, widely distributed in temperate and tropical regions.
Ours are smooth herbs, with loosely clustered, complete flowers, having
five sepals; five petals, alternating with the sepals; five stamens,
alternating with the petals, with swinging anthers and filaments united
at the base; ovary superior; fruit a capsule, containing eight or ten,
oily seeds.
There are many kinds of Flax, sometimes shrubby at base; with tough
fibers in the bark; leaves without stipules, sometimes with glands at
base in place of real stipules; flowers mostly blue or yellow. There
are numerous, small-flowered, annual kinds, difficult to distinguish
and usually somewhat local. _L. usitatíssimum_, an annual, with deep
blue flowers, is the variety which, from time immemorial, has furnished
the world with linen from its fiber and oil from its seeds. Linum is
the ancient Latin name.
[Sidenote: =Blue Flax=
_Lìnum Lewísii_
=Blue
Spring, summer
West, etc.=]
An attractive plant, from one to two feet tall, with several, erect
stems, springing from a woody, perennial root, with numerous, small,
narrow, bluish-green leaves and loose clusters of pretty flowers, each
about an inch across. The petals, delicately veined with blue, vary in
tint from sky-blue to almost white, with a little yellow at the base.
This is common and widely distributed, from Manitoba to Texas and
westward, but the fiber is not strong enough to be used commercially.
[Illustration: Blue Flax--Linum Lewisii.]