42 MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 



characters: a compound (bracteate) inflorescence, several or usually 

 numerous ovules and seeds, and a persistent 2-parted calyx, so 

 deeply parted that the lobes are often referred to in descriptive 

 works as sepals. In all other characters, such as habit, foliage, 

 inflorescence, corollas, anthers, fruits, and seeds, the utmost 

 diversity prevails. 



In segregation, the most useful characters are to be derived 

 from those structures which may be termed collectively the 

 vegetati\'e appendages of the scape, all of them reduced foliar 

 organs, and may be distinguished as scales, bracts, and bractlets. 

 Of these, the bracts alone are invariably present, and of these 

 there is sometimes only one. Each pedicel is axillary to a bract, 

 'although when there is only a single flower its pedicel commonl}^ 

 appears like a prolongation of the main axis of the scape, and the 

 rudimentary tip of the latter looks as if it were opposite to the 

 single bract. 



The bracts may be either basifixed or basisolute. In the latter 

 case the bract is produced below the point of insertion into a 

 free lobe, more or less similar to and sometimes almost as large 

 as the portion above the point of insertion. At first sight this 

 character, so striking and not known to me outside of this family 

 of plants,^ would appear to be of primary importance in any scheme 

 of classification; but the Lentibulariaceae appear to have de- 

 veloped three very distinct types of basisolute bracts, and I have 

 come to regard the structure of the bract as less fundamental than 

 the presence or absence of bractlets. 



In one type of basisolute bracts the free base is relatixely short, 

 and may be compared to an auriculate base with the auricles 

 meeting below and fused along the line of contact; this type 

 occurs in Meloneura, Pelidnia, and Pletochasia, and basisolute 

 bractlets always accompany the bracts. In the second type the 

 bracts are almost exactly peltate, the point of insertion being near 

 the middle; it occurs in Avesicaria and Setiscapella, and there are 

 no bractlets. In the third type the free portion consists of a 

 more or less membranous outgrowth, of irregular shape, extending 

 downward like an apron from the transverse line of insertion of 

 the bract; this occurs only in Vesiciilina, and while it appears to 



'A very similar structure has been described as occurrini^ in Lititiillius, a Soiitli 

 African genus of Liliaccae. 



