TERMINOLOGY IN MONOCOTYLEDONS. 509 



occasionally absent organ is sufficient to remove the two or three 

 species from Scirpus is another question*. 



In Lipocarpha (Plate VIII. fig. 5) there are two scales en- 

 closing the flower, as in Hypolytrum ; but they are quite flat and 

 placed fore and aft, parallel to the subtending glume, which may 

 leave some doubt as to their homology, whether with the bracteoles 

 of Hypolytrum, or with the inner scales of Mapania and Pandano- 



phyllum to be presently referred to. 



In the large cosmopolitan and familiar genus Cares, the female 

 flower is well known as enclosed in an organ which, from its shape, 

 has been generally called a utricle, the nature of which has been 

 much discussed, but is now generally admitted to be composed of 

 the union of two scales or bracteoles, as well illustrated by Dr. 

 M'Nab and Mr. Dyer in the 14th vol. of our Journal. Of this 

 explanation there can be no reasonable doubt, though there are 

 still some puzzling characters which slightly invalidate the strict 

 homology of this utricle with the bracteoles of Hypolytrum, es- 

 pecially the occasional development of an additional axis of inflo- 

 rescence within the utricle, and the constant absence of all trace 

 of the utricle in the males, whilst it never fails in the females. 

 However this may be, the organ is so peculiar and so necessarily 

 noticed in every specific description of Cariceae, that there is 

 great convenience in giving it a special name, for which the term 

 perigynium is now generally adopted. Its homology with the 

 above-mentioned scale formed of the united bracteoles in Platylepis 

 and Ascolepis is so very probable, that there is no objection to 

 giving to that organ also the same name (bracteolae in perigynium 

 connate), and even to the pair of distinct bracteoles of Hypolytrum, 

 although here it may be better simply to call them bracteoles. 

 But the giving the same name of perigynium to parts of the flower 



or fruit which are not even distinct organs, as has been recently 

 done, can only mislead and produce confusion. Thus, in Ficinia 

 and the allied genera Hemichlcena and Acrolepis, Boeckeler uses 

 the term perigynium for what Kunth more correctly calls the disk, 

 a slight expansion at the apex of the gynophore or stipes under 

 the ovary ; and the so-called perigynium of Anoporum is nothing 

 more than a cellular and rather hard thickening of the pericarp, 



* In the ' Flora Honkongensis ' I followed the received terminology in de- 

 scribing the flower of Hypolytmm as a 1 -flowered spikelet ; but I had not then 

 had the opportunity of following out the homology through Ptatylepis on the 

 one side and Mapania on the other. 



