VALUE OF CHARACTERS. 369 
or an outer row of receptacular palee. But this is a mere war 
of words. Homologically the two are one and the same thing; 
but, as a matter of convenience in description, it has been a general, 
and ought to be an universal, rule to call all that are outside of 
all the florets involucral bracts, and those only which are within 
the outer rows of florets receptacular palez. 
With regard to the use made of the presence or absence of these 
pale: not only as a generi¢ but as a subtribual or even tribual cha- 
racter, it proves with certain restrictions to be a good one, although 
in some cases it is very artificial or uncertain. Thus the rigid, 
usually persistent, receptacular paleze are constant, or nearly so, in 
Helianthoidez and the subtribe Buphthalmee of Inuloidez, and 
never occur in Helenioidese; whilst the thinner more deciduous 
ones of a very few small genera of Vernoniacesw, Eupatoriacee, 
Asteroide, and Senecionides are sometimes inconstant in the same 
genus. In Anthemidee this character conveniently, although 
somewhat artificially, separates the Huanthemee from the Chrysan- 
themes. In Cichoriacez, where, from the absolute uniformity of 
the florets, there is such a dearth of distinctive characters, these 
pales have been eagerly seized upon for the separation of some 
subtribes or other divisions; but a very little examination will show 
that they are at most of generic value for the separation of such 
closely allied groups as Hypocheris from Leontodon, Rodigia from 
Crepis, &e. The peculiar shape assumed by the pales is often 
of much more absolute generic importance, as, for instance, those 
of Scolymus, which are accompanied by so many other characters 
in habit, involucre, receptacle, &c., although still with the uniform 
florets of Cichoriace:e. 
There is a state of the receptacle which has been variously 
described as paleaceous or naked, or neither, and which certainly 
sometimes passes from one to the other. On the naked receptacle 
each floret, after the fruit has fallen off, leaves a more or less marked 
scar, either on a small protuberance which may be said to be a 
rudimentary pedicel, or in a depression in which the achene was 
seated. In the former case the receptacle is said to be scrobiculate 
or furrowed by the depressions round the protuberances; in the 
latter it is described as foveolate or pitted. When there is neither 
much protuberance nor depression, but the area of each achene is 
marked by a more or less distinctly raised line round its circum- 
ference, the receptacle is said to be areolate. When this line is 
more raised and jagged on the edge, or broken into short sete or 
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