XXXVi PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



3. " On Napoleona, Omphalocarpum, aud Aster antlios." By J. 

 Miers, Esq.,V.P.L.S. 



The plants forming tlie small group of the Napoleonece are eon- 

 fined to two very heterogeneous genera — one from Africa, the 

 other from Brazil. Napoleona was discovered in 1787 at Owaree 

 bv Palisot-Beauvois ; AsterantJios was established in 1820 by 

 Desfontaines, when he associated it with Napoleona as a group 

 belonging to Symplocinece. These plants have been ever since a 

 complete puzzle to botanists, who have assigned to them remotely 

 dissimilar positions, the last being that given by the authors of 

 the ' Grenera Plantarum,' who make them a subtribe of Lecy- 

 thidese, one of their tribes of Myrtacese. A careful examination 

 of these plants has convinced the author that most botanists have 

 been wide of the mark in regard to their true affinity. In his 

 analysis of Napoleona he separated carefully the several parts 

 which constitute the flower, which are arranged in four distinct 

 whorls, all fixed on the outer margin of a short erect annular epi- 

 gynous disk ; the external whorl is the corolla, which is orbicular 

 with many strong subulate nerves confluent around their base, 

 and terminating in as many short lobes that divide the circumfer- 

 ence. The other parts within the corolla have been called the 

 corona, and form three whorls. The outer one consists of about 

 seventy narrow pointed segments somewhat shorter than the 

 corolla, all free to the base, where they are attached to the disk, 

 at some distance from which a prominent vesicle is seen on each 

 upon its median nerve ; so that when the corolla is removed a 

 moniliform ring of seventy vesicles is distinctly observed on the 

 under side of these radiating segments — an important feature 

 which has been overlooked by all botanists with one exception, 

 and which perhaps ofi'ers a key to the nature of the whole struc- 

 ture. The second whorl of the corona, when the other parts are 

 removed, is seen to consist of about forty similar but broader seg- 

 ments, all confluent for half their length into a depressed globe 

 or cup ; the free portions of the segments, being incurved, meet in 

 the centre ; when this globular cup is viewed from below, a similar 

 moniliform ring of forty vesicles, similar in diameter to the former 

 one, is distinctly seen upon the nerves of the segments. The third 

 or inner whorl consists of twenty free similar segments somewhat 

 broader than the last, all curving inwards in a horse-shoe form, 

 so that their extremities all converge around the stigma, each of 



