SOUTH AMERICAN BOTANY. 59 
CYPHOCARPUS. 
The discovery of a plant possessed of many abnormal charac- 
ters, is always more interesting to the Botanist, than the detection 
of a new genus, marked by features that only serve to fill up an 
ordinary link in the chain of some well-recognized family. The 
plant under consideration will be seen to be extremely anomalous 
and curious in its structure, It was collected in Chili by Bridges, 
and exists in the Herbarium of Sir William Hooker, who, with 
his accustomed liberality, had the kindness to offer it to me for 
examination. It evidently belongs to the class Epicorollia, or 
rather the Campanulee of Jussieu, according with the Campanu- 
laceæ, Lobeliacee, Goodenoviacee, Cyphiacea, and Stylidiacea, in 
having an epigynous corolla and stamens alternate with its lobes : 
the insertion of the stamens, however, is not epigynous, as in all 
these families, but decidedly perigynous, originating in the middle 
of the tube of the corolla. It corresponds also with the four last- 
mentioned orders, in the corolla having an irregular border, but 
it is not divided into distinct petals: its tube is not cleft on one 
side to the base ; nor are the stamens in any degree syngenesious, 
as always occurs, at least, in the Lobeliacee. From the Goode- 
noviaceæ, it differs in the estivation of the corolla; for, in that 
order, the broadly-winged margins of each lobe respectively are 
involutely imbricated upon one another,* while in Cyphocarpus 
the margins are irrespectively induplicate with those of the con- 
tiguous lobes and valvate with them : these lobes, too, are of one — 
equally thin membranaceous texture, not thickened in the middle — 4 
as if another narrower petal were glued upon the back ; it must 
* This is a distinction deserving of some notice. Endlicher, in his character of 
the Goodenoviacee, (Gen. Pl. p. 506) defines this by saying ^ lobis æstivatione 
induplicatis,” which conveys a very incorrect notion of this peculiar manner of præ- 
 floration, especially if we confine that expression to the limit given to it by Prof. i 
_ Lindley in his Intr. Bot. 411, fig. 6. Mr. Robert Brown, who founded the order, i 
expresses this feature in far more exact terms, viz., “ lateribus æstivatione indupli- 
cati” (Prod. 573) ; but it appears to me, it n + 
