16 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
common species. Leaves deep green, acim | concolorous in thi 
sritish plant, but sometimes marked with black blotches. 
Mr. F’. Townsend, who kindly sent me a fine series of fresh speci- 
mens from the Isle of Wight, tells me that there the leaves of A. ltalie 
cum have their basal lobes as often parallel as spreading, and that they 
are quite as liable to be spotted as those of A. maculatum, but that he 
never saw the spots of the former with a jagged outline, which often 
occurs in A. maculatum. He has never seen the veins white. 
Seven or eight years ago, I received living plants of this from its 
discoverer, Mr. A. Hambrough, and have cultivated these ever since, 
The plant grows much more ‘luxuriantly and flowers more freely with 
me in London than A. maculatum does. 
I have also cultivated the true A. Italicum, brought me from 
Monaco by Mr. G. B. Robertson. Some of these have the leaves veine 
with white, and others have them concolorous. The leaves have the 
basal lobes much less bent upwards than in the Isle of Wight plant, 
and their outline is more triangular, but in every other respect—time 
of appearance of the leaves and of flowering, shape of the spathe, 
essential organs, and barren pistils—the two are undistinguishable. 
Italian Cuckoo-pint. 
French, Gonet a Ttali¢ iF . 
ORDER LXXVIL—LEMNACESA. : 
Small floating submersed herbs, without an ordinary stem or leaves, 
but consisting of minute leaf-like fronds (internodes of the stem), from 
the edges of which other and smaller fronds are often produced, 
sinking to the bottom of the water in winter, where the minute bud 
of the fronds persist until the succeeding spring, when they rise to the 
surface, the old ones decaying annually. Flowers produced from the 
edges or rarely from the upper surface of the frond (very rarely 
observed in some of the species), enclosed in a minute bract or spathe. 
Male flowers 1 or 2, reduced to a single naked stamen, with a filiform: 
filament and a 2-celled anther. Female flower solitary, included i 
the spathe with the 1 or 2 male flowers, reduced to a single nakeé 
1-celled ovary; ovules 1 to 4, or rarely more, inserted at the bottom 
of the cell; style short; stigma truncate, depressed. Fruit a mem 
branous utricle, indehiscent. Seeds 1 to 4; albumen none. 
GENUS I1—LEMNA. Linn. 
The only genus of the order. 
The origin of the name of this genus of plants is supposed to be the Greek word 
Nezic, a scale ; but it is somewhat doubtful as to the meaning of the word. 
