66 Writi7zgs of Edwa^^d L, Greene. [zoe 



" very small at the base of a copious hard-cartilaginous or almost 

 corneous albumen; cotyledons rounded somewhat convolutely 

 enfolding the short blunt radicle " the fact being that the 

 cotyledons were as long as the seed, and did not enfold an^'thing. 

 Although he had the courage to found a genus upon this plant, 

 he had no conception of its relationship, and sometime subse- 

 quently put this near relation of Guaiacum next to Sim- 

 mondsia, in his list of the plants of Cedros Island. 



In declaring Syrmatium"^ Mr. Greene says: "In restoring 

 this long-neglected genus, I am not obliged to rest it upon those 

 characters alone, sufficient although they would seem to be, 

 which were indicated both by Vogel and by Nuttall a half century 

 ago. The indehiscent pods promptly deciduous at maturity are 

 so utterly and widely unlike those of any Hosackia that I 

 suppose the character being here pointed out, there will hence- 

 forth remain less excuse than formerly for confounding the 

 genera." Subsequently in working over the genusf he found 

 himself able not only to reduce Syrmatium to Hosackia again, 

 but Hosackia itself to I^otus, remarking that "since the jointed 

 pedicels and deciduous fruiting calj^ces of, for example, the 

 Lagopus subgenus of Trifolium are not to be of generic import, 

 neither maj^ they be so treated in this group of Lotus which has 

 been called a genus under the name of Syrmatium. The 

 indehiscence of the pods is not at all confined to this group of 

 species. In the very type of the Hosackias and in all its near 

 allies the dehiscence is so tardy that they may about as well be 

 described as indehiscent." 



In Pittonia ii, 292, he devotes some space to the fruit of 

 Garrya, which according to his account he has just seen mature 

 for the first time. He is astonished that great botanists like 

 Lindley, Endlicher, and Bentham should have been so greatly 

 mistaken as to consider the fruit a berry " when the first glance 

 at these clusters revealed the fact that the fruit is not baccate, 

 but capsular and the capsule has a circumscissile dehiscence. 

 * * * Xhe circumscission of the capsule is neither very 

 prompt, nor in a geometrically perfect circle, but if tardy and 



* Bull. Cal. Acad, ii, 145. 

 t Pitt, ii, 137. 



