IC^-oivit Copyright Reserved. 



ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW. 



BULLETIN 



OF 



MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 



No. ]0] 



[1914 



LXV,— HERDERIA AND TRIPLOTAXIS. 



J. Hutchinson. 



(Witli Plate.) 



He 



Cassini* in 



1830 on a specimen collected in Senegambia, and preserved in the 

 herbarium of M. Merat, Paris. The species, which he called 

 Herderia truncata, is now known to be fairly widely spread in 

 Tropical West Africa, occurring from the Senegal southward to 

 Nigeria, A typical shoot of H. truncata is depicted on the plate, 

 fig. A. The plant when mature is of a procumbent straggly habit 

 with numerous weak branches radiating from an erect slender 

 root, and the capitula are solitary at the ends of the leafy shoots. 

 The involucre is very remarkable in the tribe Vernomeaey in that 

 it consists only of two series of bracts, an outer one the bracts of 

 which are foliaceous and free from one another (fig. 1 and la), 

 and an inner row of membranous ones connate to above the 



middl 



4-ribbed 



and glabrous, and they support a pappus (figs. 3 and 4) arranged 

 in two distinct series, a series of 9-10 small subpaleaceous scales 

 with a series of 3-4 longer barbellate setae intermixed. 



In 1849 a second specids, H. stellultfera, was described by 

 Benthamt from material collected by Vogel in the island of 

 Fernando Po. A portion of a plant of this species is shown in 

 the plate (fig. B). The capitula are arranged in lax corymbs and 

 are supported on slender peduncles ; the involucre is quite of the 

 Vernonia character, i.e., of about three series of bracts all quite 

 free from one another and amongst themselves, and not at all 

 foliaceous (fig. 6) ; the achenes (fig. 7) are terete and hairy, and 

 the pappus is 1-seriate and represented by a very small pectinately 



toothed cup (fig. 8). 



Comparison of habit and floral dissections, together with the 

 widely different structure of the involucre, make it clear that the 

 two species represent perfectly distinct genera. 



Cass. Dicfc. Sci. Kat. Ix. 599. 

 t Benth. in Hook. Niger riora, 425. 



(3535.) Wt. 225^595. 1,125. 12/14. J. T. * S. G. 14. 



