428 SYNGENESIA— POLYG.^SUPERF. Senecio. 



making a very elegant appearance. The /lowers are essentially 

 different ; Jiorets all tubular, generally with 5 segments, occa- 

 sionally with 4 only, most of them destitute of stamens, but with 

 perfect germen, style and stigmas, the latter being slender and awl- 

 shaped. Their seeds, crowned with silvery, simple, sessile, rough- 

 ish down, are all perfect, at least in appearance. In the centre 

 of the disk are one or two, scarcely more, barren Jiorets, having 

 a more conspicuous reddish corolla, with 5 segments, and as many 

 stamens, whose anthers are very slightly, if at all, combined, 

 and whose stigmas are short and thick, totally inefficient, there 

 being only the rudiments of a germen, and no seed. This plant, 

 known by the name of T. hybrida, I ventured to hint in Engl. 

 Bot. 430, published in 1797, might be the true fertile plant of 

 T. Petasites. It is more correct to term it a variety of the latter, 

 in which the fertile, or seed-bearing, organs predominate. As 

 to the actual perfecting of the seed, we know nothing, the But- 

 ter-bur being one of those herbs whose immoderately prolific 

 roots, like those of Mints, hardly allow them to produce seeds. 

 We therefore can judge of their apparent perfection only. I 

 did not know that my supposition had been anticipated by the 

 ingenious and acute Ehrhart, whose remarks on several species 

 of Tiissilago, to the same effect, I have recently found in his 

 Beilriige, vol. iii. p. 64 — 66. My ideas were thought so bold 

 and unauthorised in England, that I have ever since, till now, 

 confined them to a mere suggestion. They have neverthe- 

 less been adopted, in their original form, by the late Prof. 

 Willdenow and by Dr. Hooker, but without reference to me. 

 Willdenow mentions Ehrhart's name, and cites Hoppe's Tas- 

 chenbuch, for the year 1 803 ; not having access, as it seems, to 

 my English Botany, though he generally, after the Didyna- 

 mia class, refers to the Ft. Brit, where he might have found the 

 same remark. The observations and opinions of these excellent 

 botanists give the more support to my theory, as being inde- 

 pendent of it, and I no longer scruple to reduce T. hybrida to 

 Petasites, not as its proper fertile, or seed-bearing, individual, 

 but as a casual variety. Several foreign species are in the same 

 predicament with regard to others. See Engl. Bot. 431, and 

 Willd. Sp. PI. V. 3. 1973 ; also DeCandoUe's Fl. Fran^aise, v. 4. 

 1 58, where the same opinion is followed. 



398. SENECIO. Groundsel or Ragwort. 



Linn.GenA2A.Juss.\m. Fl.Br.S8l. Tourn.L260. LamJ.676. 



Gcertn. t. 1 QC). 

 Jacobeea, Tourn.t.276. Gcertn. t. \70. 



Nat. Ord. see w. 396. 



Common Cal. double; the inner rather conical, abrupt, 

 of numerous, equal, parallel, linear, contiguous scales; 



