ME. J. MIEBS ON THE CERYANTESIEJ2. 81 



valvate margins, closely appressed but not agglutinated together, 

 form a subglobose glabrous whole, 7 lines long, 6 lines broad, the 

 divisions being 1 line in thickness ; nut covered by a dark thinnish 

 pericarp, unilocular and monospermous ; seed filling the cavity of 

 the nut, perforated at its base, covered by a whitish simple inte- 

 gument ; this and other parts as in the generic character. 



Cavanilles makes no mention of the peculiar scales which I 

 saw upon the inner surface of the calycine division of C.Kunthiana, 

 though he mentions the membranous corolla as intervening be- 

 tween the fruit and those divisions. 



I need not enter into the history of this species, nor how it 

 came to be confounded with C. tomentosa. Cavanilles, half in- 

 clined towards the opinion of their identity, concluded at last by 

 saying, " hoc affirmare non audeo, propter characterum discrepan- 

 tiam." 



In the typical species the branches are much stouter, more 

 suddenly and approximately bent, the branchlets more straggling 

 and flexuous, the leaves more oblong, deeply channelled down the 

 middle, the sides very convex, straighter and more recurved, 

 covered beneath with a rusty whitish tomentum, the petioles being 

 shorter and narrower. In Nee's plant, the branches and branch- 

 lets are straighter and more slender, the leaves are more elliptic, 

 flatter, less rigid, and covered beneath with dense red tomentum, 

 the petioles broader and longer. In the former plant the inflo- 

 rescence consists of very small remote fascicles of few subsessile 

 flowers, seated upon the geniculations of a longish very flexuous 

 peduncle ; in the latter species it forms an axillary panicle, alter- 

 nately branched, each branch bare at its base, and bearing up- 



wards many subaggregate flowers upon distinct stoutish pedicels. 



There is also a difference in the development of the fruit, as the 

 drawings of the two authors manifest : in the former species the 

 fleshy, much enlarged calyx that invests the nut has its 5 divisions 

 divaricate above and below ; in the latter these are less elon- 

 gated, and closely invest the nut all round. 



"We thus find the two species marked by sufficiently valid dif- 

 ferences. 



3. Cervantesia KuNTniANA, Baillon, Adans. ii. p. 373, tab. xi., 



iii. p. 125. 

 Sf P., nee ( 



H.B. 



Quiten 

 Hook. 



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LINN. JOUBN. — BOTANY, VOL. XVII. O 



