NEW OR NOTEWORTHY SPECIES. 163 
VISCAINOA GENICULATA = Staphylea geniculata, Kellogg, 
Proc. Cal. Acad. ii. 24 (1859). A low shrub with stoutish 
and rigid crooked branches: leaves alternate (but the pe- 
duneles opposite them), cuneate-obcordate, or cuneate- 
obovate and emarginate or retuse, with a very short petiole, 
firm-coriaceous, somewhat reticulate-veiny, minutely puberu- 
lent on both sides under a lens, an inch or more in length, the 
margin entire: peduncles stout, an inch or two long, 1—5- 
flowered ; pedicels less than an inch long, stout and deflexed, 
slightly enlarged under the pods: pod an inch and a fourth 
in length including the stout beak-like persistent styles, 
strongly 4- (rarely 3- or 5-) lobed, inflated and of firm-cori- 
aceous texture; the lobes, when mature, separating from the 
slightly coherent and columnar placente into narrow and 
deep cymbiform beaked valves which are exteriorly reticulate- 
venulose, carinate, and obscurely tomentulose, and of a shining 
satin-like smoothness within : seeds 2 in each cell, suspended 
almost or quite collaterally from near the summit of the 
column, oval in outline, 3 lines long, and with a small hemi- 
spherical white strophiole ; testa dull and dark brown ; embryo 
very small, at the base of a copious hard-cartilaginous or 
almost corneous albumen; cotyledons rounded, somewhat 
convolutely enfolding the short blunt radicle. 
Concerning this rare and curious shrub of the Lower Cali- 
fornian peninsula no new knowledge is forthcoming bey ond 
what has been gained by a minute and thorough examination 
of the good fruiting specimens, collected by Dr. Veatch almost 
thirty years ago, and now preserved in the herbarium of the 
California Academy of Science. It is plain, however, that it 
is neither a Staphylea nor a member of any otherwise known 
genus. With respect to its affinities, conjectures may profit 
little so long as the flowers remain unknown. The structure 
of the pod, and the merely external characteristics of the seed 
are suggestive of Buxacex, or Euphorbiacee, but the substance 
and conformation of the nucleus are against this view. I have, 
nevertheless, a suspicion that this and that other anomalous 
Lower Californian shrub, Simmondsia, are of one natural 
