WILD FLOWERS. A somewhat indefinite term applied to flowers of plants growing with out cultivation, which by reason of their size and colors are conspicuous objects to the ordi nary observer.
Plants are grouped by botanists into orders, families and genera. For example, the wild yellow or field lily is known as Lilium cana dense. Canadense is the specific name. Liliurn is the generic name (Lilium philadelphicum being another species belonging to the same genus). Lilium belongs to the lily family, Ldiacece, which contains a number of closely related lily-likegenera. The lily family in turn belongs to the Order Liliales, which contains in addition to the Lily family the Trillium family (Trilliaceee), the Lily of the Valley family (Convallartacee) and other rather closely al lied families.
Some families of flowering plants contain a large number of species, others contain hut a few species. The largest families of flowering plants in the northeastern United States are the following : The whole number of species of flowering plants (native and introduced) treated in the last edition of Gray's 'Manual' is 4,079 (includ ing 115 species of ferns and 25 species of Gym nosperms or cone-bearing trees). The number
of species treated in Britton and Brown's 'Illus trated Flora> is slightly larger.
The number of wild flowers described and illustrated in the 'Wild Flowers of New York) is slightly less than 400, which does not include all plants with conspicuous or attractively col ored flowers, and which might be called "wild flowers.° Small's 'Flora of the Southeastern United States' contains 6,364 species. Rydherg's 'Flora of the Rocky Mountains and the Adja cent Plains' describes 5,897 species, and the total number of species of flowering plants in the United States and Canada is estimated to be between 9,000 and 10,000.