/ 
ROSE—MEXICAN AND CENTRAL AMERICAN PLANTS. 3825 
Collected by C. G. Pringle on banks of disintegrating limestone near Jojutla, 
Morelos, August 30, 1902 (no. 8690, type) also near Iguala, Guerrero, October 3, 1900 
(no. 9225), also at Iguala by Dr. Wim. Trelease, August 8, 1903. 
The following paragraph taken from the Report of Missouri Botanical Garden is 
published with the permission of the Director, Dr. William Trelease, who has also 
consented to the use of the two plates which illustrated his article. 
While making observations on an undescribed Agave which grows on the vertical 
cliffs of a deep marble canyon a few miles above [guala in the State of Guerrero, last 
summer, my attention was attracted by an abundant Begonia which grew in similar 
situations and differed from all of the other species of this genus that I had seen in 
possessing only a single radical leaf, through the sinus of which a few-flowered scape 
arose,—naked except for a rather small leaf-like bract subtending its single branch, 
and much smaller bracts in the inflorescence proper. Though my time was largely 
occupied with the Agave for which [ had visited the canyon, herbarium and living 
specimens and photographs of the Begonia were secured, and a subsequent study of 
this material showed that the species belongs to the Section Huszia of modern 
writers, which Klotzsch regarded as a genus separable from Begonia, its only close 
ally being B. monophylla Pavon in DC, Prod. 15': 284. The latter, so far as I can 
learn, is known only from the type sheet in the Boissier herbarium, the label of 
which attributes it to New Spain. This group, Huszia, is that of the so-called 
tuberous begonias, some of which are now popular in cultivation,—nearly all of them 
coming from the Bolivian or Peruvian Andes. B. monophylla is said to produce a 
tuber 9 lines thick and to have a single petioled 12 to 15-nerved very shortly pilose 
leaf which is cordate or sometimes peltate, and rather large flowers. 
On showing my material to Dr. J. N. Rose, whom I met in the City of Mexico, I 
learned that apparently the same species had been earlier collected by C. G. Pringle, 
and distributed in his set of 1902 under the manuscript name 2B. unifolia Rose: a fact 
verified at my return to St. Louis—the distributing number being 8690. 
Aside from its northern distribution for a species of the Section Huszia, the rather 
uncertain source of its closest relative, B. monophylla, and the single leaf which, like 
the latter, it produces, B. unifolia is of interest in that its single large leat is closely 
applied to the rock or talus in the crevices of which it is rooted, so that its subterra- 
nean parts are thus given the same kind of protection afforded by the similarly 
appressed basal leaves of the stag-horn ferns, Platycerium. 
EXPLANATION OF PLATE LXX.—Fig. a, plant; b, male flower; c, stamens; d, female flower; e, cap- 
sule; f, cross section of capsule. Fig. a, scale 4; 0, ¢, and /, scale 9: ¢, and e¢, scale 3, 
MELASTOMATACEAE. 
RESTORATION OF SCHIZOCENTRON.’ 
In studying several years ago the original description of //eerva ele- 
gans, the type species of the genus Heeria of Schlechtendal, I was 
astonished at the differences between it and all the other species 
included in the genus by M. Cogniaux. But as no material of this 
species was at hand, the study was laid aside for the time being. In 
the summer of 1899, however, I visited Jalapa, Mexico, in the hope 
of obtaining //. e/egans, and was successful in collecting both herba- 
rium specimens and seeds. The differences suggested by the deserip- 
tion were more than borne out by the living plant. It is character- 
ized by its creeping vine-like habit, its ovate leaves 3-nerved from the 
base, its large solitary terminal long-peduncled purple flowers, and its 
persistent calyx lobes. In all these respects it differs from the other 
species referred to Heeria, which should therefore now be restored to 
@ Schizocentron Meissn. Gen. Com, 899, 1845, 
Heeria Schlechtendal, Linnea 18: 432. 1839, not Meissn. 1837. 
Type species S. elegans Meissn. |. c. 
