Plantagineae
A natural order of herbs, sometimes annual or perennial, almost stemless or stolon-bearing, sometimes shortly caulescent, branched or suffruticose, glabrous, simply pilose, or woolly in the axils; they are natives of the temperate regions of both hemi-spheres, especially in Europe and North America, and are but rarely met with in the tropics. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite or monoecious, small, in elongated or shortened spikes, or rarely solitary and sessile in the axils of the often scarious bracts; calyx four-parted, with closely-imbricated segments, persistent in the fruit; corolla hypogynous, gamopetalous, scarious, marcescent, with an ovoid or cylindrical tube, and four speading, imbricated lobes, sometimes wanting in the female flowers; stamens four, or fewer. Fruit a one or more celled, one or more seeded, membranous capsule, stipitate or included. Leaves radical, or in the caulescent species alternate, rarely opposite, one to many-nerved, entire, toothed, or pinnatifid, sometimes sheathed; petioles usually dilated at the base, and accompanied by a woolly membrane. Several species of Plantago are employed in medicine. The order comprises only three genera--Bougueria, Littorella, and Plantago--and perhaps about 200 species.