CAMPANULACEOUS AND OLEACEOTJS ORDERS. 7 



South- African and other species, all retained as Lobelia by De Can- 

 dolle and others, appear to me to differ more from each other in 

 habit and character, than some of them do from the American 

 Tupce, or from the small South- African groups generically sepa- 

 rated by De Candolle after Don and Presl, chiefly from the degree 

 of irregularity or fissure of the corolla, which it is often impossible 

 to define in words. Amongst the latter, however, I was at first 

 disposed to maintain the genus Parastranthus, founded on two 

 species with yellow flowers quite sessile, without the reversion 

 which takes place generally in the tribe by the torsion of the 

 pedicel ; but to these two Sonder has added, as a third species, 

 the Lobelia leptocarpa, DC, with shortly pedicellate blue flowers, 

 in which, as far as I can judge from dried specimens, the re- 

 version takes place in some flowers and not in others, thus 

 quite invalidating the generic character. There are also, I be- 

 lieve, other cases of partial or variable reversion. 



Lobelia Bergiana, Cham., under Presl's generic name Gramma- 

 totheca, had been associated by De Candolle with Clintonia, 

 Dougl. (now Bowningia), in a distinct tribe, with the remark- 

 able character of a unilocular capsule with two parietal pla- 

 centae, but opening in three valves. . To this tribe he gave the 

 name of Clintonieae, altered to Grammatothecese by A. Gray, 

 who (Journ. Linn. Soc. xiv. 29) remarks on it as a second in- 

 stance of Lobeliaceous genera related to each other found in 

 the two distant localities California and South Africa. But all 

 this is founded on the hasty erroneous observations of Presl, 

 never since verified, as I pointed out (Fl. Austral, iv. 128). 

 The only character the two plants have in common is the long 

 narrow ovary and capsule, which occurs here and there in single 

 species of other genera. . L. ( Grammatotheca) Bergiana, accurately 

 figured in Delessert, Ic. Sel. v. t. 6, has the true fruit of a Lobelia, 

 completely two-celled and opening at the apex in two short locu- 

 licidal valves between the calyx-lobes ; and the only way I can 

 account for Presl's singular error is from his having observed old 

 empty capsules, which in their decay have split up longitudinally 

 below the calyx-lobes, the walls of the cells separating from the 

 dissepiments, which latter he must have mistaken for a third 

 placentiferous valve. In Bowningia the capsule remains closed 

 at the apex, but really opens below the calyx-lobes in lateral 

 slits for the emission of the seeds. As the walls of the cap- 

 sule are made up of the pericarp and the adnate calyx-tube 



