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DISTRIBUTION OF TRIBES. 415 
in which the female florets, when present, are filiform, not 
ligulate. 
1. The TancHoNANTHEX are placed first, as having their diœ- 
cious character in common with the Baccharidew (the last sub- 
tribe of Asteroides), which they may in that respect be said to 
represent in South Africa; and the hermaphrodite florets being 
constantly sterile, their styles are the same in both cases; but 
there is no direct connexion between the two. The habit and the 
anthers are as absolutely different as the geographical situation, 
besides that, in Tarchonanthez, the form of the style-branches of 
the female florets is a greater departure in shortness and breadth 
from the almost uniform slender shape than I have met with else- 
where in the order. The subtribe consists of two genera and nine 
species, all strictly South-African, to which should probably be 
added the Mascarene Syachodendron, of which the sterile flowers 
alone are known. 
2. PnLvcurrNEX. The genus Pluchea in an extended sense 
might include Blumea, Sachsia, Rhodogeron, and Tessaria; and, 
indeed, the whole subtribe show the filiform female florets, 
small achenes, and slender pappus of the Conyza group of Aste- 
roides, but with the Inuloid anther-tails, the styles without ter- 
minal appendages, and usually drier involueral bracts, and a few 
other features rather different from those of Conyza. The various 
genera proposed or adopted depend chiefly upon differences in 
the pappus and other individual characters, aud are more or less 
artificial and not always geographical. The nearest to Conyza is 
Blumea, strictly confined to the tropical and subtropical regions 
of the Old World and mainly Asiatic. It consists of about 60 
species of varied habit, ranging from that of Conyza to Pluchea 
itself. Several species, widely diffused tropical Asiatic weeds, 
very difficult to distinguish from each other, only differ from 
Conyza in their anthers, whilst in the closely allied African and 
Asiatic genus Laggera, of about ten species, these anthers even 
lose their tails; but these species are in their styles and other 
respects quite removed from Conyza, and belong to a group inter- 
mediate, as it were, between Blumea aud Pluchea. Notwithstand- 
ing, therefore, any such exceptional forms which interfere with 
accurate technical characters, I believe there is never any difi- 
culty in distinguishing at once any Inuloid Laggera, Blumea, or 
‘other Plucheinea from any Asteroid of the Conyza group. 
Pluchea, less varied in form than Blumea, and far less numerous 
LINN. JOURN.—BOTANY, VOL, XIII, 2H 
