10 Mr. J. Micrs on the Solanacete. 



flowers of largo size, witli a thick flcsliy corolla, having a ven- 

 tricose funnel-shaped tube, and a border of five large fleshy lobes, 

 which ia sestivation are so deeply imbricated that they com- 

 pletely overlap one another. In Datura, on the contrary, the 

 corolla is white or of a lurid blue, with a nearly entire or pen- 

 tangular border ; this in sestivation is plicated into five deep folds, 

 which almost meet in the axis, and these folds are torsively and 

 spirally twisted round the common centre^ having their margins 

 thus valvately coherent in juxtaposition : no two cases of more 

 extreme difi'erence could have been selected. On account of the 

 very dissimilar aestivation of the corolla and other distinct features, 

 the separation of Solandra viridiflora from this genus, as pro- 

 posed by me under the name of Dyssochroma, has been acknow- 

 ledged by I\I. A. DeCandoUe in the Appendix (Prod. xiii. 689), 

 although they are corabiued together in the body of the work. 

 Ectozoma also, having a corolla with an imbricated aestivation, 

 and which 1 have shown to be.allied to Juanulloa, is also placed 

 among the Daturea, but for what reason is not explained : it has 

 not the smallest relation with Datura. I shall in a separate 

 memoir conclude the remarks I have to make on Datura and the 

 genera allied to it, which I consider distinct, but which M. Duual 

 regards as mere sectional divisions of that genus. 



Many objections may be made to M. Dunal's subtribe of 

 HyoscyamecE, formed only of the genera Hyoscyamus and Sco- 

 polia : this subtribe I have excluded from true Solanacece on ac- 

 count of the decided aestivation of the corolla. In the generic 

 character of Hyoscyamus, this feature is represented as being 

 plicated, not imbricated, and the description of the mode of pla- 

 centation is quite at variance with my own observation ; indeed 

 the entire generic character given in the ' Prodromus ' (p. 546), 

 is a copy, verbatim, from the text of Dr. Putterlich in ' Nees's 

 Gen. PI. Flor. Germ.' On a former occasion {huj. op. v. 468) I 

 showed that this description does not accord with the very clear 

 and analytical details exhibited in the accompanying plate : the 

 aestivation of the bordei-, said to be plicate, is distinctly deli- 

 neated as being quincuncially imbricate in figs. 3. and 21, and 

 there is no indication of any plicature of the border in any of the 

 other several figures of the coi-olla : the placentae are stated in 

 the text of that work, and of the ' Prodromus,' to be inserted on 

 the dissepiment by a linear dorsal line, while the figures 19. and 

 28. exhibit broad lunated placentae projecting into the cell, con- 

 nected with a short membrane that emanates from the axis of 

 the dissepiment : I find neither of these statements to accord 

 with what I have seen in Hyoscyamus pictus, of which species I 

 have examined scores of ovaria and capsules, in a living state, 

 where I have invariably found the placentae to be thick and 



