[TAB. CXIII.] 
REMARKS on tot GENUS FLOERKEA or WILLDENOW. 
Bv Jous Linptey, Esq. 
Professor of Botany in the London University. 
THE genus FLOERKEA, established by Willdenow in 1801, 
and adopted by all succeeding systematic botanists, except 
Pursh, who reduced it to Nectris, is one of which our knowledge 
has hitherto been extremely imperfect. Referred to Juncec by 
St. Hilaire, to Hydrocharidee by Reichenbach, to the vicinity 
of Portulacee by Nuttall in his Genera of North American 
Plants, afterwards, by the same author, to the neighbourhood 
of Crucifera, and finally altogether omitted by Bartling, it has 
remained a kind of botanical puzzle, which no one has been 
able to explain. Having been recently favoured by Dr. 
Torrey with very complete specimens, both in flower and fruit, 
I find the structure so much at variance with that which is 
usually assigned to it, as to deserve to be made generally 
known, ‘To criticise the characters by which it has been 
hitherto defined, would be only to enumerate a series of mis- 
conceptions or omissions that have arisen from the minuteness 
and delicacy of its parts. A more agreeable task will be to 
describe the fructification, as I have found it myself. 
FLOERKEA. 
ALABASTRI calyx herbaceus, monophyllus, trifidus, zestivatione 
valvata; laciniis erectis, intus striis acicularibus notatis ; 
petala tria, minuta, membranacea, disco carnoso perigyno 
inserta, uninervia; stamina 6, in eadem disco inserta, 3 
sepalis opposita petalis equalia, 3 petalis opposita multo 
— breviora; filamenta subulata, flava; anthere subrotunde, 
biloculares, longitudinaliter dehiscentes; ovarium superum, 
trilobum, lobis calycis laciniis oppositis; stylus filiformis, 
lobis ovarii vix longior; stigma trifidum ; ovula nM 
 ascendentia. - 
Froris xri calyx. S-partitus, laciniis ovatis acuminatis ; 
i Secon meer E 
