AND ANATOMY OF THE GENUS RESTIO. 219 
happens that the two inner lateral glumes have their margins 
somewhat involute and wrapping round the style, while the pos- 
terior one remains flat. In form, relative size, texture, colour, 
&c., these glumes vary considerably in different species, and afford 
good distinguishing characteristics. In all cases they are “ per- 
sistent” around the ripe fruit, and sometimes “accrescent.” The 
inner lateral glumes of R. setiger present a peculiarity which is 
worthy of notice, and which consists in the existence on the middle 
of their inner surface of a cushion-like pad of cellular tissue ; the 
central posterior glume has only a very small central thickening, 
but both its edges are rolled inwards around the style. It would 
seem as if these excrescences, conjoined with the infolded margins 
of the glumes, must serve some special purpose in relation to the 
fertilization of the plant, but without an examination of fresh 
specimens it would be idle to speculate on this point. The growth 
in question will remind the observer of the glands on the outer 
surface of some of the segments of the perianth in amer, 
In R. bifurcus, N. ab E. MSS., there is between the inner glumes 
and the stamens a small membranous lobed cup or disk, which 
may possibly represent a row of abortive stamens outside those 
which are usually present, and which it will be remarked are 
opposite to the inner glumes; if the disk, to which reference has 
just been made, be really the representative of an outer series of 
stamens, then the symmetry of the flower would be restored. 
The male flowers have usually three hypogynous stamens placed 
opposite to the inner glumes, as just stated, but in R. tenuissimus 
there are but two, while in some of the Australian species there 
are six, thus completing the floral symmetry. The filaments are 
generally flattened and ribbon-like, attached by their upper ends 
to the back of the anthers a little above their base, so that the 
latter are described as peltate in spite of their erect, not horizontal, 
position. In the young flowers the filaments do not greatly exceed 
the anthers in length, and thus the whole of the stamen is in- 
cluded within the glumes ; but after, very rarely before, the burst- 
ing of the anther, the filament lengthens, so that ultimately the 
anther projects beyond the glumes. I have never observed un- 
opened anthers protruding from the perianth. 
In form the anthers are linear or oblong, often surmounted by 
a small mucro, which originates just below the apex on the dorsal 
surface as in the sheaths and bracts. 
The dehiscence of the anthers takes place lengthwise along a 
central suture, and thus exposes a single cavity. The anthers are 
