> NOTES ON THE SARCOBATUS. 
one of the oldest flowers should have been so considered. 
The stigmata are two, but very unequal, one of them 
being rudimentary, and this I found to be so universal, that 
I cannot suppose it to be the result of accident; they stand 
right and left of the axis. It should also be observed that 
connected with this inequality of the stigmata is a great 
obliquity in the ovary, one side being very convex, while the 
other is almost straight. 
As to the affinity of Sarcobatus, the probability is that the 
genus belongs to the diclinous plants associated with Cheno- 
podiacee. Indeed I had at one time laid my specimens into 
Kochia, so much does it resemble that genus. Until, how- 
ever, seeds can be examined, this point must necessarily 
remain unsettled. 
It is certainly very like Batis in its male flowers, especially 
as they are described by Willdenow ; but it can have no real 
affinity with that ill-understood plant,* which must remain 
in a great measure a puzzle until the ripe seeds of it shall - 
have been examined. Without, however, venturing just now - 
to offer any suggestion as to its station in the Natural System, 
I may mention that it has no such * involucrum diphyllum” as 
istobe met with in books, and I do not think that its ovary is 
one-celled as it is described by Endlicher. Some good spe- 
cimens, which I owe to the kindness of Sir W. Hooker, - 
enable me to state that the female inflorescence consists of : 
a spike of naked, fleshy, four- to six-celled ovaries, completely 
consolidated into a succulent cone; each ovary has a single | 
roundish sessile emarginate stigma on the upper edge. In 
each cell there is a single erect ovule. At least, so I interpret | 
the structure, which, from its succulence, is extremely diffi- - 
cult to make out. I believe the scales which Endlicher : 
describes as belonging to each ovary, to be nothing more 
* It is necessary to observe that the observations upon Batidee in the - 
Natural System of Botany, ed. 2, p. 175, were made in the belief that Dr. 
Wallich's Batis aurantiaca belonged to the genus. It, however, being a 
widely different plant, the remarks offered in the work referred to have - 
no application. 
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