AS san 
ey, 
BULLETIN 
OF THE 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB. 
Vol. XIV.) New York, August, 1887. (No. 8. 
The Genera Echinocystis, Megarrhiza and Echinopepon. 
By SERENO WATSON. 
The first and for a long time the only known North American 
species of the American tribe of Cucurbitacee which is called by 
Bentham & Hooker the E/atertee, and by Cogniaux the Cyclan- 
theree (both names proposed by Naudin and equally appropriate, 
but the latter the earlier), was the Echinocystis lobata, Torr. & 
Gray. This was first described by Herrmann in 1698 from plants 
raised in Holland from seeds which Tournefort had received from 
Canada. It was next noticed by Muhlenberg in his Index 
Florez Lancastriensis (1793).* By Muhlenberg, as afterwards 
by Seringe in DeCandolle’s Prodromus, it was referred to 
Momordica, and by Michaux to Sicyos. Its distinctness as a 
genus was first shown in Torr. & Gray’s Flora, where the name 
Echinocystis was given to it, their previous Hexameria of the 
same year (1840) being preoccupied. 
An allied plant of Oregon which had been collected by 
Douglas and Scouler, and referred by Hooker to the eastern 
Sicyos angulatus, was distinguished from that species by Torrey 
& Gray as S. Oreganus, the specimens being too imperfect to 
show its nearer affinity to Echinocystis. In the years 1854 and 
*It is not probable, as Cogniaux thinks, that the A/aterium trifoliatum, Linn., 
based upon Clayton’s description of Virginian specimens, can be referred to this 
species. The description agrees better with Sicyos angulatus, notwithstanding the 
‘yalvulis vi elastica per maturitatem dehiscentibus.’* The Zchinocystis is not known 
to occur in Virginia. ; 
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