1917-18.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 283 



{a) Squainate bulb. 



(6) Open perianth. 



(c) Dissimilar sepaline and petaline perianth-segments. 



(d) Fringed basal foveola on petaline segments only. 



(e) Swollen lower portion of staminal filament. 

 (/) Dorsifixed anthers. 



(9) Style. 



Taken by themselves in relation to those of Lilium and 

 Fritillaria these characters seem to be decisive as differential 

 generic marks. But, as is well known, the limit between 

 Lilium and Fritillaria is difficult to define — if it really 

 exists. On the one hand, there are the Notholirions, 

 excluded from Lilium by Baker ^ and by Elwes, but in- 

 cluded by Bentham and Hooker ; '' on the other hand, the 

 Liliorhizae, which have been shuttled also from one genus 

 to the other, are now placed in Fritillaria by Bentham and 

 Hooker.^ Into both we have yet to see much more clearly 

 before phyletic claims are established. A recent illustration 

 of the difficulty which botanists have experienced in assort- 

 ing forms is seen in the Szechwan plant which Franchet* 

 first of all named Fritillaria lo2)hoj)hora, suggesting at the 

 same time that it might constitute under the name Lopho- 

 phora a particular section of the genus. Subsequently 

 Franchet transferred the species to Lilium as Lilitivi 

 lophophortivi.^ Now, in the light of further discoveries, 

 it may be a question whether the place of this plant is in 

 one of these genera, or is in Nomocharis, or in a new genus 

 intermediate to Lilium and Fritillaria. After all, so far 

 as nomenclature is concerned, it is a matter of convenience, 

 seeing that our genera are only temporary expressions of 

 reaction of a phyletic line, and what we have to strive after 

 is a grouping and naming which shall best give us a picture 

 of phyletic relations as they appear to us. 



In order to obtain data for determining the best disposal 

 of the forms brought together under Nomocharis I will 

 now touch in succession upon the differential characters 

 of the genus : — 



1 Baker in Journ. Linn. Soc, xiv (1875), 268. 



2 Bentham et Hooker, Gen. Plant, iii (1883), 817. 



3 Ibid., Gen. Plant., iii (1883), 818. 



* Franchet in Journ. de Bot., v (1891), 153. 

 5 Ibid., xii (1898), 221. 



