MR. W. FAWCETT ON BRUGMANSIA LOWI. 245 
has fifteen linear oblong callosities, glabrous, colourless, equidistant, furrowed in the 
middle, concealed by the ramenta. The limb is 5-partite (6-partite in the figure), with 
lacinize which have two or three furrows or fissures; the genital column is globose and 
less depressed, the upper part is marked with various furrows, which perhaps correspond 
to the number of the anthers, which moreover correspond to the number of the furrows 
of the tube of the perigone on which they must press in the bud; the stalk or neck of 
the column is more elongated; the anthers are thirty-eight to fifty. Finally B. Zippelii 
is hermaphrodite.” 
The question is now finally settled by a coloured drawing and an expanded flower 
together with buds, sent to the British Museum by Mr. H. O. Forbes. These plants he 
collected on the slopes of Mt. Dempo, Sumatra, at an elevation of 4000 feet. 
The expanded flower is not perfect, as the ovary is wanting. It is, however, extremely 
interesting, since it confirms a happy conjecture of Beccari, founded on an examination 
of the bud, namely, that the perianth in opening splits up into “ fourteen to sixteen 
laciniæ,” instead of into five or six, as in В. Zippelii, Bl. Mr. Forbes's fully-opened 
specimen shows that the perianth splits up into sixteen lobes, and therefore as a species 
it is quite distinct. A transverse section of the inflexed parts in the bud shows that 
eight of them form a central mass, while the remaining eight alternate with them on 
the outside; an indication of this double series is afforded by the alternate lobes in the 
bud dipping beneath the others at a short distance below the apex of the bud. The 
lobes are connected below the bud apex by a membranous extension of the inner surface, 
which is reduced in the inflected portion to a narrow wing. When the flower opens, the 
web is split more or less between each lobe. The apical portions, which have been 
inflexed, are always free. 
The fissures extend downwards to about the level of the top of the genital column, 
and this is therefore the limit of the tubular portion of the perianth. The flower opens 
wide and flat at this point, though the web may not be ruptured between all the lobes. 
From the existence of the web between the lobes it would seem as if a tube were 
formed by the inflexed parts on the first expansion of the bud, leading from the exterior 
to the depression in the genital column. If it be so, it may possibly be connected with 
cross fertilization by insects. The strong fetid odour which Mr. Forbes noticed in this 
plant may also have some relation to the action of insects. 
° Beccari figures the cells of the anthers as directly superposed; in Mn Forbes's speci- 
mens there is an appearance of alternation. 
