APPENDIX. 47 



although the floral leaves are often alternate, the cauline leaves 

 are most generally opposite, a circumstance that occurs only ac- 

 cidentally in Solanacece : the inflorescence is strictly axillary*. 



The AtropacecE will comprise all the anomalous exceptions to 

 the foregoing rules in the Solanacea and Scrophulariacece^ and 

 will include plants with monopetalous flowers, with the tube 

 often plicated longitudinally in bud, and a border often some- 

 what unequal, but seldom bilabiate, generally divided into five 

 lobes, which are always either imbricatcly disposed in aestivation, 

 or arranged under some modification between that form and the 

 induplicate, but never valvate, the margins of each lobe being con- 

 stantly free from the adjoining ones : they have generally five 

 epipetalous fertile stamens, alternate with the lobes, one of them 

 sometimes shorter, and very rarely three of them sterile : anthers 

 generally introrse, sometimes extrorse, 2-lobed, usually with par- 

 allel cells bursting longitudinally, one of the lobes being occa- 

 sionally sterile : ovarium 2-loeular, rarely, with other spurious 

 cells, caused by the abnormal growth of the placentsej with ovules 

 generally ascending, attached to fleshy placentse adnate to the 

 dissepiment, as in the two preceding families, a simple style, a 

 bilobed stigma, often of a peculiar form : fruit either baccate or 

 capsular : seeds generally reniform and compressed, with a lateral 

 hilum, the embrj^o placed in albumen, and either straight or 

 more or less curved, sometimes spiral, with the radicle, as in the 

 Solanacece, always turned away from the more lateral hilum. 

 Herbaceous plants or shrubs, with a habit similar to that of the 

 Solanacecey with alternate, simple, geminate, or fasciculate leaves : 

 inflorescence generally somewhat extra-axillary, and lateral in 

 regard to the insertion of the petiole. 



The distribution of the Solanacece and of the Atropace^e, as 

 proposed in this work {huj. op. i. 164-178), like every first at- 

 tempt of the kind, is sure to present many faults that will admit 

 of correction, but it appears deserving oi the attention of bota- 

 nists as a general plan : it certainly effects the great desideratum 

 of removing the obstacles that have always stood in the way of 

 a satisfactory arrangement of the Solanal alliance, and it sepa- 

 rates the genera into very natural groups, which we do not meet 

 with in the system adopted by M. Dunal. Some observations 



* The efficacy of this test may be applied to Verbascum, a genus of the 



Scrophulariacecd, which offers so many anomalous characters, as to have 



induced many botanists to place it in Solanacece, On a fonner occasion I 

 discussed this subject at some length {huj. op. i. 181), when reasons were 

 shown why a preponderance tended towards its position among the Scro- 

 phnlariacecB as determined by Mr. Bentham : to these I may now add the 

 fact of the structure of the seed, in which the radicle of its straight embrjo 

 is directed towards its basal hilum. 



