1917-18.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 287 



jecting on the upper surface of the segment and separating 

 distinctly a left side of its lamina from a right side of its 

 lamina at the base. 



{(l) The glandular area is at the base of the segment, and 

 owing to the projection of the midrib it is divided into a 

 left half and a right half, or, if you will, there are two 

 glandular areas, a left-side one and a right-side one, and 

 these are separated by the nonglandular midrib. 



(e) Each of these dark-coloured glandular areas has 

 arising from it a correspondingly dark-coloured flap as- 

 cending fan-ways and deeply incised, fringe-fashion, and 

 the fringe-lobes are covered with excreting gland-cells. 

 From dried specimens — and these are all I have been able 

 to use for this analysis — it is not easy to be sure of minute 

 anatomical details, and I cannot say to what extent each 

 flap converts its glandular area into a pocket-gland, such 

 as that which we meet with in Ranunculus ; nor can I say 

 whether the gland-area beneath the flap has excretory 

 cells — certain is it the fringe-lobes of the flap are really 

 glandular. 



It is this spreading flap — crista basilaris — which has 

 attracted most attention as a diflerential character, so far 

 as gland-structure is concerned, in Nomocharis ; but, after 

 all, it is only a concentration of the excreting cells which in 

 Eufritillaria are distributed more or less over the whole 

 area. What is previous to it is the division of the glandular 

 area into lateral halves separated by a raised midrib and 

 the restriction of the glandular area to the petaline segments. 



Were this construction peculiar to Nomocharis it might 

 be taken as a strong generic chai-acter. But it is not so. 

 In the whole series of Oxypetala (I except for the moment 

 F.Jiavida, which I have not seen) we find a basal glandular 

 area on the petaline segments only, a prominent midrib 

 separating the glandular area into two divisions — a right 

 and a left — the glandular area crested. In the cresting 

 there are just such difl'erences, so far as I can determine in 

 dried specimens, as prevent our saying that it is that of 

 Nomocharis. The somew^hat regular fan-like expansion of 

 a fringed flap is absent, and the cresting is distributed over 

 the surface, extending sometimes upwards along each side 

 of the raised midrib. But these are, if anj^thing, details of 



