194 PITTONIA. 
floral receptacle is wholly unlike that of any Ranunculus, 
being very small and almost flat,so that the achenes are 
either erect, or the outer ones merely ascending, the whole 
head of them being only broadly turbinate, never globular 
as in Ranunculus, when the receptacle itself by being 
rounded determines a globular or ovoid rather than tur- 
binate outline to the fruit head. All authors, including 
Nuttall himself, have failed to perceive this character, and 
have erred in describing the heads as globular or globose ; 
though Nuttall's term “spheroidal ” is sufficiently loose, as 
to the possibilities of its interpretation, to exempt him from 
this criticism. But broadly turbinate does, without am- 
biguity, express the form of the fruit heads, unless in some 
instances they be found to be hemispherical ; and this seems 
to be true in a few immature heads dried under much press- 
ure. That the carpels, achenes, are imitative of those of 
Thalictrum, is a character which eannot elude observation ; 
but the style differs from that of Thalictrum as much as from 
that of Ranunculus, for it is inflexed, and usually quite ab- 
ruptly so. 
Since the accompanying plate of Oyrtorhyncha was printed— 
and I had believed that it was to be the first figure ever 
issued of this interesting plant—the second volume of Dr. 
Britton’s Illustrated Flora has appeared, and with a figure 
purporting to represent this type. The genus is reinstated 
by Dr. Britton, but the imperfect figure is so completely 
subversive of the generic characters that, in so far as it may 
be received as representing the plant, it will confirm the 
idea set forth by Bentham and by Gray, that the plant is, 
after all, nothing but a Ranunculus with ribbed achenes. 
For, instead of the seven or eight narrow almost ligulate 
petals of Cyrtorhyncha, Dr. Britton has given us the five 
short rounded petals of almost any Ranunculus. In place 
of the ample more than half dichotomous naked cyme, he 
has presented us with a buttercup stem, with two or three 
solitary flowers, each in the axil of a leaf, quite as in many 
