| Common flax is an annual plant, with an erect, slender, round stem, about two feet in height, branching at top, and, like all other parts of the plant, entirely smooth. The leaves are small, lanceolate, acute, entire, of a pale-green color, sessile, and scattered alternately over the stem and branches. The flowers are terminal, and of a delicate-blue color. The calyx is persistent, and composed of five ovate, sharp-pointed, three-nerved leaflets, which are membranous on their border. The petals are five, obovate, striated, minutely scalloped at their extremities, and spread into funnel-shaped blossoms. The filaments are also five, united at the base, and the germ, which is ovate, supports five slender styles, terminating in obtuse stigmas. The fruit is a globular capsule, about the size of a small pea, having the persistent calyx at the base, crowned with a sharp spine, and containing ten seeds in distinct cells.
[Seeds are] ovate or oblong-lanceolate, flattened, obliquely pointed at one end, from 3 to 5 mm. in length; externally chestnut-brown, very smooth and shiny, the raphe extending as a distinct, light-yellow ridge along one edge; easily cut with the finger-nail; internally olive-green; oily ...
Seeds small, brown, glossy, nearly flat; from about four to six millimetres long; ovate, somewhat obliquely pointed; surface glabrous and minutely pitted. Internally yellowish-white, with a narrow oily endosperm and two large oily cotyledons. Epidermal cells filled with mucilage which swells and dissolves in water.
Source: United States Dispensatory (1918) [7]
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