328 DK. HEtfUY TEIMEN Otf THE GENUS OUDKETA. 



Note on the Genus Oudnpya, Brown. 

 By Dr. Henet Tkimen, F.L.S. 



[Eead February 20, 1879.] 



The genus Oudneya was dedicated to the memory of Dr. "Walter 

 Oudney, K.N"., by Eobert Brown in 1826*. Dr. Oudney died, at 

 the age of only 32, after long sufferings bravely endured under the 

 hardships and difficulties of travel in an unknown country, on 

 Jan. 12, 1824, at Murmur, in Central Tropical Africa. During his 

 explorations in the two previous years he formed a herbarium ol 

 over 300 species, which was the subject of the well-known memoir 

 by Brown, published as an appendix to the volume giving a nar- 

 rative of the expedition. 



Oudneya africana was founded on a few specimens of a small 

 Cruciferous shrub of peculiar habit, growing in many of the 

 wadis on the route between Tripoli and Mourzuk. Though con- 

 stituting it a new genus, Brown did not consider it a new species, 

 but identified it without any doubt with the plant described and 

 figured by Yivianif in 1824 under the name of Hesperis nitens. 

 The collection of plants worked up by this author was made m 

 Northern Tripoli and Cyrenaica in 1817 by Delia Cella : the figures 

 are but rough outlines ; and many of the species were scarcely de- 

 terminable until M. Cosson, whose knowledge of the botany ot 

 North Africa is unequalled, carefully examined the types of Delia 

 Cella in Viviani's herbarium preserved at the University of 

 Genoa, and published the results of his examination J. He found 

 that Hesperis nitens was a species of JHoricondia, M. svffruticosa, 

 Coss. & Dur., itself scarcely more than a variety of M. arvensxs, 

 DC, ; consequently Oudneya africana was quoted by Cosson as a 

 probable, though doubtful, synonym of that species 



In 1855 the same eminent botanist (M. Cosson) published a 

 new genus, Henophyton\\, based on a plant found abundantly near 

 Guerram, in the desert of Southern Algeria, which he named H* de- 

 serti, Coss. & Dur. This genus, which has good distinctive cha- 

 racters, was maintained in Bentham and Hooker's ' Genera Plan- 

 tarum' in 1862^[, where the authors suggest that the scarcely 



* Denham and Clapperton, Narrative of Travels, Appendix, p. 129. 

 t Florae Libycae Specimen, p. 38, tab. v. fig. 3. 

 } Bull. Soc. Bot. France, xii. (1865) p. 275. § Loc. cit p. 280. 

 || Bull. Soc. Bot. France, ii. (1855) pp. 246, 625. Dedicated to M. Henon 

 who first found the plant in 1853. 



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% Benth. & Hook, f., Gen. Plant, i. p. 85. 



