perianth-segments as petals, I referred it to Portulacee, 
and named it (after the many ribs on the dried petals) 
Pleuropetalum Darwinit. The only known specimen of 
this plant is in the Cambridge University Herbarium, and 
until better materials should be forthcoming, and especially 
fruiting ones, it was thought better, when describing the 
Portulacee for the first volume of Bentham’s and my | 
**Genera Plantarum,” to retain it, with a mark of doubt, in 
that Order. Endlicher, however, in the fourth Supplement 
to his “ Genera Plantarum” (p. 44), had rightly referred it 
to Amaranthacew, in which he was followed by Moquin 
Tandon in De Candolle’s Prodromus (vol. xiii. pars 2, 
p- 463), who, moreover, changed the generic name to 
Allochlamys, on the ground of the perianth-segments not 
being corolline. When preparing the Amaranthacee for 
the “Genera Plantarum,” I met with an undescribed plant 
gathered by Spruce on Chimborazo, which (relying on 
Spruce’s description of the fruit) I described as Melano- 
carpum Sprucei (vol. iii. p. 24), whose similitude to the 
absent and long-forgotten Plewropetaluwm I did not recog- 
nize, and which differs from that genus in having usually five 
nearly free stamens, and two to three stigmas. This, 
which is also found in Mexico, Mr. Hemsly, in the “ Bio- 
logia Centrali-americana,”’ has regarded as conspecific with 
the Plewropetalum costaricense, and probably rightly ; but 
it remains to be seen whether both may not be referable 
specifically to P. Darwinii, for which better Specimens of 
the Galapagos plant are necessary. 
Dzscr. A small shrub, quite glabrous; branches smooth, 
terete, green. Leaves petioled, alternate, four to five 
inches long, elliptic-lanceolate, acuminate, with the tip 
often drawn out, margin even or obscurely undulate, dark 
green above, paler beneath, nerves many oblique; petiole 
one-half to one inch long. Flowers small, very numerous 
in terminal and axillary subcorymbose much-branched 
panicles, shortly pedicelled, bracteate and two-bracteolate ; 
bracts small, at the base of the pedicel; bracteoles minute, 
ovate, obtuse, connate at the base. Perianth a quarter of 
an inch in diameter, green at length scarlet ; segments five, 
elllptic-oblong, obtuse, concave, spreading, strongly many- 
ribbed when dry. Stamens five to eight, hypogynous, 
