Mr. J. Miers on the Calyceracese. 175 



only upon a species of Boopis previously described by Poppig 

 and Lessing. In the same manner, the Acarpha of Dr. Grise- 

 bach * must be referred to Boopis, and the Gymnocavlus-f of 

 Dr. Philippi to Calycera, upon grounds that will presently be 

 shown. 



The Calyceracece have many characters in common with the 

 Composite. Their flowers, often intermixed with setaceous palese, 

 are aggregated upon a general receptacle, which is enclosed 

 within an involucre of bracteiform leaflets more or less combined 

 in one series : the ovary is constantly inferior ; the calyx, which 

 is adnate to it, has a free, generally 5 -toothed border ; the corolla 

 is tubular, the lobes of its border being valvate in aestivation, 

 and possessing the same peculiar system of nervation as the 

 Composites; their anthers, in like manner, are syngenesious; 

 their ovary is also inferior, 1-celled, and 1-ovular; and the fruit 

 is a dry achsenium surmounted by the indurated and enlarged 

 teeth of the calyx. They differ essentially, however, in the 

 structure of the ovary, the ovule being suspended from the apex 

 of the cell (not erect) ; in their achsenia being crowned by the 

 calycine teeth, often elongated into rigid spines (not surmounted 

 by a pappus) ; in their seeds containing a copious albumen, and 

 a terete embryo, the radicle of which usually exceeds the coty- 

 ledons in length, the radicle pointing to the apex of the cell 

 (not to its base) ; their anthers, too, are deficient of the apical 

 expansion of the connective, usually found in Composite. They 

 are all herbaceous plants, natives of South America, mostly 

 growing in elevated and arid situations in the Andes of Chile ; 

 two species extend into the Cordillera of Peru ; three are found 

 near the Straits of Magellan ; seven others on the eastern por- 

 tion of the continent, bordering on the Rio de la Plata and the 

 Rio Grande; and another extending beyond the line of the 

 Southern Tropic, growing along the sea-shore of Rio de Janeiro, 

 and as far to the northward as Bahia. 



Some points of their structure are yet considered to be ambi- 

 guous, opposite views in regard to them having been held by 

 Brown and Richard, which I will endeavour to reconcile and 

 explain. The stamens, always equal in number to, and alternate 

 with the segments of the corolla, have their anthers free at their 

 summits, but confluent by their margins towards their base 

 into a syngenesious ring : the summits of the five filaments are 

 quite free, but are combined below into a cylinder, which is 

 adnate to the tube of the corolla above its middle, while the base 

 of this tube is seated upon a prominence which crowns the sum- 

 mit of the ovary, and bears the style. Upon the tube of the 

 corolla, just below the apparent attachment of the free portion 

 * Diagn. PL Lechler, p. 38. t Linnaea, xxviii. p. 705. 



