78 NATUEAL HISTORY. 



MEMORANDUM by Dr. D. Macdonald, m.d., Vice- 

 President of the Society, on the Species of BALANO- 

 PHORA, Found and Described by Mrs. W. E. Hart. 



The plant consisted of an irregular, somewhat flattened rhizome, 

 roughly tubercular on its upper surface, and having the remains 

 of rootlets on its under surface. On the upper surface of the 

 rhizome there were several short unbranched cylindrical peduncles, 

 an inch or more in diameter, more or less completely covered by 

 imbricated fleshy scales, of a yellowish colour ; the peduncle 

 terminated in a rounded convex head, on which were studded 

 numerous flowers. These heads were of two kinds — one being 

 covered with staminate flowers, consisting of a deeply four-lobed 

 perianth, enclosing a central column or androphore, and having the 

 anthers arranged in a sinuous in form on its summit. The second kind 

 of head was soft and velvety to the touch ; but the separate flowers, 

 which were densely packed, were too small to admit of identification 

 without a magnifying glass. One or two small portions I tried to 

 preserve, and after leaving the hills I was able to make out that 

 they were pistillate flowers, with a minute ovary, and a simple styl© 

 and stigma. 



My first impression was that the plant was possibly a peculiar 

 cucurbitaceous plant, seeing the flowers were monascious, and that 

 the staminate flowers had monadelphous stamens with sinuous anthers. 

 But on returning to Bombay I found the characters answered to 

 the descriptions given of the Balanophoraceae — an order which 

 Hooker has studied with great minuteness, and which has many 

 points of special interest. 



More than thirty years ago botanists grouped several orders — 

 Cytinacese, Rafflesiaceas and Balanophoraceae — into a separate class, 

 which was placed between the flowering and non-flowering plants. 

 These orders had a few characters in common : they were parasitical ; 

 destitute of true leaves ; the stem was generally an amorphous 

 fungoid mass, and there was an absence of green colour. The nature 

 of the seeds was little knowD, some being described as consisting of a 

 mass of spores, and others as having a cellular nucleus. The 

 researches of Hooker and others have shown that there were not 

 sufficient grounds for forming a new class, and now these orders 

 are looked upon as simply degraded exogens. Hooker considers the 

 Balanophoraceas allied to the Natural Order Haloragaceae. Lindley 



