56 CHLORIS BOREALI-AMERICANA. 



guishing them, and indeed his whole alliance, from the Ericaceous group by a 

 sole diagnostic character (tlie anisomerous cells of the ovaiy) which would 

 not only exclude one of his genera, namely, Eliiottia, but also embrace Cle- 

 thra, Loiseleuria, Leiophyllum, &c. During the present year, M. Plan- 

 chon has reestabhshed the group as one of the primary divisions of Erica- 

 ceae, with the diagnostic character of " Ericeae petalis liberis, antheris inappen- 

 diculatis, fructu indehiscente (an semper ?), loculis monospermis," adding 

 a new genus, Purdicea, which, with the habit and much of the structure of 

 Cliftonia, has a slender style, and anthers opening by terminal pores.* 



The discovery of this interesting genus thus appears to prove that Cyrilla 

 and Cliftonia were rightly referred to Ericacea; ; although, on the other hand, 

 Cliftonia is scarcely to be distinguished from the order Aquifoliaceae except by 

 the want of an hypogynous disk, the double number of stamens, the dry, in- 

 stead of drupaceous, fruit, and the slender embryo. But Cyrilla further differs 

 in another particular, which it is the principal object of this note to record. 

 The seeds are indeed solitary, but the ovules are about three in each cell ; as 

 is well shown in some analyses kindly made for me, in the spring of 1839, by 

 M. Decaisne. I also find, on reexamination with better specimens, that the 

 ovary of Eliiottia bears several (6—10) ovules in each cell, which are so small 

 and so closely packed together on the short pendulous placenta, that they were 

 mistaken for a single ovulum. The fruit is still a desideratum ; but, from the 

 appearance of the ovary, I suspect it will prove to be capsular and septicidal ; 

 so that, for the present, the genus should perhaps be placed next to Bejaria. 



Correction. The name of Corema Conradii has already been taken up by Dr. Torrey 

 for the plant described in the first article of this memoir, in a letter to the late Mr. Loudon, cited 

 in the Gardener's Jlfoo-azme, Vol. XVII. ; and it is employed in houdon's Arboretum and Fni- 

 ticetum Mridged, p. 1092. 



* Description d'wn Genre voisin du Cliftonia, &c., in Hooker's London Journal 

 of Botany, for May, 1846, p. 250, tab. 9. 



