MB. G. BEKTIIAM OK MEKISPEBMACE.E. 45 



V 



Notes on Menispermacece. By George Bektha.ii, V.P.L.S. 



[Read March 7th, 1861.] 



Ik the Menispermacece, as in the Anonacece, Hooker and Thomson 

 have left but little to be done with regard to tlie Asiatic genera, 

 until we shall have more satisfactory materials. The constant 

 unisexuality of these plants, the difficulty of matching the male 

 and female specimens even when we possess both, the great dif- 

 ferences occasionally observed in the ripe fruit and seeds of spe- 

 cies which are al nost identical in their male flowers, are great 

 obstacles to the proper classification of the order from herbarium 

 specimens. It is indeed often impossible to identify species or 

 genera which have been established on the examination of one sex 

 only. And this is peculiarly the case with the South American 

 Menispermacece, which have been so much mismatched, even by 

 the experienced hand of Miers, that we have been obliged to reject 

 amongst doubtful and indeterminable genera most of those of 

 which one sex only, or the fruit without the flowers, have been 

 described. 



Before entering into any generic details I would advert, in a 

 few words, to the so-called opposition of the stamens to the petals 

 in Menispermacece and Berberidece, as compared to that observed 

 in Buettneriacece, Bhamnece, Ampelidece, Myrsinece, Primulacece, 

 etc., which is only apparent in the former case, more real in the 

 latter. In the trimerous, dimerous, or rarely tetramerous Meni- 

 spermacece and Berberidece, the petals and stamens each usually 

 consist of two distinct whorls— the outer stamens opposite to the 

 outer petals, the inner stamens opposite to the inner petals— and 

 consequently those of each whorl alternate with those of the whorl 

 immediately below them, precisely as in the great mass of flower- 

 ing plants. In the Primulacece, Bhamnece, and other usually 

 5-merous or 4-merous families above mentioned, the opposition of 

 the stamens to the petals seems to be more real, both being in 

 single whorls, and suggesting in some cases (e. g. Primulacece) 

 the suppression of an intermediate whorl, or perhaps in others 

 (e. g. Bhamnece), giving the idea of a common origin, as it were, 

 of the petal and its opposite stamen; the latter being perhaps 

 developed in the axil of the former, rather than produced from at 

 by a so-called dMoublcment, as supposed by A. Gray. 



Before Miers published his outline sketch of the genera ot 

 Menispermacece, the South American species of the order had been 



