379 
(vol. ix, p. 90), that Akania was referable to the “ Staphyleae” in 
spite of its alternate leaves and the absence of stipules. In 1890 
Radlkofer discussed at some length the relationship of Akania in his 
ney os “epee der Sapindaceen” in Sitzungsber. d. k. Bayersch. 
Ak. Band xx. p. 127-138, and pronounced for Staphy- 
ass ‘it girs this admission that the genus represented an 
anomalous type of that order, the b sae y is being in the alternate 
estipulate leaves, the perigyny of the flowers, the diplostemony of 
the androecium, the sentation! © epitropous ovules and certain 
anatomical characters. Solereder in Berichte der Deutschen 
Botanischen Gesellschaft, Band x. (1892), p. 551, came to the same 
conclusion and established a tribe Abanieas: of Staphyleaceae which 
apart from Akania also included Huertea and Tapiscia, Hi 
argument rests mainly on anatomical and seed characters; but even 
so the new tribe cannot be considered as sufficiently ti 
In fact, Pax in his monograph of the Staphyleaceae in Engler 
Prantl’s Natiirliche Pflanzenfamilien (Teil iti. Abt. 5. p. 259 ; 1893), 
while accepting Tapiscta and Huertea as the representatives of a 
distinct tribe (Tapiscioideae) of Staphyleaceae, felt obliged to reject 
Akania not only from that tribe but from the family, relying on the 
alternate arrangement of ne leaves, the absence of stipules and 
especially the diplostemony of the androecium, the number of 
ovules in each cell and their pendulous, epitropous orientation. 
Excluded by Radikofer from Sapindaceae and by Pax from 
Staphyleaceae, Akania remaine . “incertae sedis” and was 
enumerated and described uch by Harms in Nachtrige 
gum ii.iv. Teil of the Natiirliche “PRanzentamilien (1897), p. 331. 
Solereder in his Systematische Anatomie der Dicotyledonen (1898), 
pp. 275, 276 (Engl. transl. 1908, pp. 242, 243), adheres to his view 
expressed i in 1892, but without adducing new reasons or discussing 
the views put forward by Pax. Since then no further contribution 
on the subject has appeared. I myself examined the dried material 
at Kew some years ago without arriving at any result except the 
negative one that Akania agreed neither with Sapindaceae nor with 
Staphyleaceae. 
The fact that in the present year a specimen of Akania Hillit 
flowered in the Temperate House at Kew and that the plant was 
selected for figuring in the Botanical Magazine induced me to take 
the matter up once more in order to see whether a place in the 
system could not be found for this stray genus. 
The descriptions which we possess of the structure of Akania are 
neither in an exact agreement nor are they quite correc 
The original description by J. D. Hooker is erroneous in two 
points of importance, namely as to the character of the aestivation 
of the corolla and the number of the stamens. Hooker described the 
pee as imbricate, and this statement is repeated in on, 
istoire des Plantes (vol. v. p.412) and in the Natiirliche Pflanzen- 
familien (Nachtriige, p. 331). Baillon, however, in 1878 pointed out 
(in Bull. Soc. Linn. Paris, i. p. 224), that he found the corolla 
contorted in all the flowers he pains of the specimen which he 
received from Hamma, and this is also my experience from 
herbarium specimens as well as from the fresh material at Kew. 
n 
