134 AN ACCOUNT OF THE GENUS ARGEMONE. 



discrete styles, to An/enioue, with styles as well as carpels fused, 

 but with stigmatic lobes so discrete that their stigmatic surfaces are 

 only contiuuGus at the bases of tlie iutervening sinuses. This 

 being the case, no hesitation is felt in uniting to the same group 

 the curious 3-merous genus Canhija, where there is no longer any 

 style, but where, as in Papaver, the merely marguial hnear stigmas 

 are, when mature, concreted into rays along the placental ribs, thus 

 giving rise to the condition spoken of in Fapacer and its allies, 

 with sufficient accuracy from the taxonomist's, but quite erroneously 

 from the morphologist's point of view, as that of "stigmas" 

 opposite the placentas.* For the whole of these 3-merous genera — 

 all of them, it is to be noted, American — the name liomneijea with 

 a modified significance may still be conveniently employed. But 

 the rank of this group is probably no more than sub-tribal ; along 

 with the extremely natural 2-merous group Humiemunniece, charac- 

 terised, like Platystemon, by valves that in dehiscing carry away 

 the placentas on their margins, — also, like the liouineyece, purely 

 American, and, like them, probably only of subtribal rank, — the 

 Eo7)ineyecB form a very natural "tribe," to which the name Arcto- 

 mecones may not inappropriately be applied. This, however, is a 

 question of academic rather than of practical interest, and cannot 

 be pursued further or in greater detail in a sketch like the present. 

 The statement that the floral arrangement in Argemone is not 

 always 3-merous has found a place in most accounts of the genus. t 

 The authorities for the statement are Haller, who describes an 

 Argemone jiore albo, sape 3-petaLo [PL Goett. 89 (1753)] ; Zinn 

 [PL Guett. 116 (1757)] , who embellishes his definition of the genus 

 with the purely imaginary character of the petals being equal in 

 number to, ^nd varying directly with the number of, the carpels ; 

 Sims [Bot. May. t. 2842 (1822)] , who figures A. albijlora wiih four 

 sepals and eight petals ; and Croom [Am. Journ. Sc. ser. 1 xxv. 75 

 (1834)] , who says that A. Georgiana has sometimes four sepals and 

 eight petals. Haller's plant is also Zinn's, but Zinn, as his 

 definition shows, knew nothing about the genus, and, as his 

 reference shows, knew nothing about Haller's plant; so far as can 

 be made out now, though the matter is of little moment, the plant 

 was a Papaver, and not an Argemone at all. Sims' figure is so far 

 accurate ; the plant from which it was drawn has some, though not 

 all, of the flowers 4-merous. Groom's remark is justified, for there 

 is at Paris a wild specimen of the species described by him, collected 

 in Florida, with some of the flowers 4-merous. But Sims' and 

 Groom's plant are the same species, and are both of them Lesti- 

 boudois's A. alba ; equally curiously, one of the oldest European 

 cultivated specimen of this species, which once belonged to A. L. 

 Jussieu, and is named A. alba Juss. in Herb. Richard, exhibits the 



* The true state of affairs in Papaver was stated in 1839 by Elkan, and 

 demonstrated conclusively in 1857 by Payer ; organically the jjlacentas are in 

 Papaver, as in every other Papaveraceous (jenus, alternate with the placentas. 



t " Sepala 2-3 (rarius 4?). Petala 4-G (rarius 8?)." — Bentham & Hooker, 

 Genera Flantanvn. " Flores plerumque b-meri." — Baillon, Hist, des Flantes. 

 "Bl. zuweileu iJ-zahlig." — Prantl & litiudig, Nat. Pjianzenjam. 



