304 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Chiranthodendron, Larreataqui (1795*), Baillon. Cheirostemon, Humb. 

 &, Bonpl. 1808. — The much older name, which Baillon has restored 

 and which we cannot properly refuse to adopt, is well formed, being 

 the Greek of the native name of the Hand-Jlower Tree. Humboldt 

 and Bonpland deliberately superseded it, merely because they thouglit 

 they could make a better and shorter name. It is only in the latter 

 respect that they were successful. 



FREMONTIA, Torr. Sepala plana, omnino petaloidea, patentis- 

 sima. Androecium regulare : columna ^qualiter 5-fida: antherae ob- 

 longo.-lineares, utrinque emarginata?, connectivo tenui hand producto 

 adnatie, loculis reniforme-incurvatis mox anfractuosis. Semen baud 

 appendiculatum. Cotyledones marginibus leviter horaotrope iucurvis. 

 — Contrary to the original description and figure, (which also repre- 

 sents an anomalous four-celled ovary, the like of which has not again 

 been met with,) the stamens alternate with the sepals. So they do in 

 the Hand-tree flower, according to Adrien de Jussieu, who communi- 

 cated a long and faithful description to the Flore des Serres (vii. 7-9) 

 in 1851, probably his last botanical writing. Dr. Masters, in Gard. 

 Chronicle, 1869, and in Seemann's Journal of Botany (vii. 298), with 

 fresh flowers of Fremontia in hand, gives the position of the stamens 

 correctly. When he insists, partly on this account, that the showy 

 perianth of Fremontia is a corolla, he forgets that in Sterculiacece and 

 probably all the Malval cohort the stamens, whenever isomerous, stand 

 before the petals or the place for them, i. e. alternate with the sepals ; 

 so that this evidence tells the other way. As for the caducous bract- 

 lets, which Dr. Masters takes for a reduced calyx, the five which he 

 found is a most unusual number. We find only three, answering to 

 the larger and less deciduous ones of the Hand-tree, and to the bract- 

 lets of most Sterculiacece. 



Bentham, adopting a suggestion of Torrey, included these two gen- 

 era in his tribe or suborder Bomhacece of Malvncece, describing the 

 stamens as united in pairs with unilocular anthers, which was a forced 

 hypothesis ; also the calyx-segments as " leviter imbricatis," which was 

 no slight diminution of the fact. But in the addenda et corrigenda to 

 the first volume of the Genera Plantarum (two years earlier than Dr. 

 Masters's note), he changes this view, and transfers his subtribe Fre- 

 montiece to Sterculiacece as a new tribe. 



It seems to me better frankly to recognize the peculiarities of these 



* With figure, &c., aud a French translation, with two plates, published at 

 Paris in 1805. 



