yellow ochre colour with a very pale border, and produce a 
pretty effect. 
Fig. 1. represents the inside of a corolla, showing the very 
peculiar stamens ; 2. is the pistil, seated in the five-lobed cup; 
3. is a piece of the old wood and flowers, natural size ; 4. is a 
reduced view of the entire plant. 
The Bignoniaceous order, although we know so little of 
it in this country, has, like almost every other old group of 
plants, grown up so as to have lost all resemblance to its former 
self, since it was first suggested. What was once scarcely 
more than a genus of 18 or 20 species has become a large 
natural order, in which nearly 400 species are arranged under 
46 genera. Of these more than three-fourths are American, 
and none actually European ; Asia contains thirty or forty in 
the tropical districts, and Africa rather fewer. In a recent 
attempt at reducing this mass into order, M. DeCandolle has 
divided it into two parts, the Bignoniez and the Crescentine. 
“* Under the first of these tribes,” he says, ‘1 unite all the 
Bignoniaceze whose fruit splits into valves, and whose seeds 
are winged ; under the second are placed those whose fruit 
does not open, and whose seeds are wingless. ‘These charac- 
ters are important and natural. In fact, in the whole vege- 
table kingdom winged seeds are never found in a seed-vessel 
that does not burst. And this is a fresh instance of the neces- 
sity of those correspondences in organs of which we find so 
many instances in the animal kingdom. Wings, which are 
intended to assist the dispersion of seeds through the air, 
cannot exist in fruits which do not naturally burst, but which 
remain constantly closed, allowing their seeds to escape by the 
decay of the tissue, or even to germinate in the seed-vessel 
itself. This division of the Bignoniaceous order into two 
tribes, founded upon both anatomical and physiological cha- 
racters, appears then to be perfectly natural; it is indeed not im- 
probable that the Crescentine may be regarded as a family, 
when they shall be better known,——At present this division 
consists of but 21 species. Its fruit is fleshy, leathery or 
woody, indehiscent, and the species are very rarely climbers ; 
for out of the eight genera that compose the tribe, there is 
but one that has the latter habit. Perhaps also the Crescen- 
tine differ from Bignoniew by their fleshy, not leafy, coty- 
ledons ; at least this character is indicated by the younger 
Gertner in Crescentia cucurbitina, the onlv species of the 
tribe the seeds of which are well known.” 
