THE HOP TREFOILS. 203 
that such plants were closely allied to Red Clover. Their 
aspect is far more that of small Sweet Clovers, 4. e., Melilotus ; 
or perhaps Medicago, rather; and natural botany therefore 
demands that to one or the other of these genera they shall 
be referred, unless they are to constitute a genus of their 
own. They have not the curved or coiled pods of Medica 
or Medicago, nor the deciduous petals of Melilotus. More- 
over,in their whole bearing there is an indefinable some- 
thing which is different from Melilotus. The floral struct- 
ure is peculiar, and remarkable. The banner of the corolla 
is not only singularly furrowed, or at least striated ; the 
manner of its folding up after anthesis is exactly contrary 
to that which it holds in thebud. In estivation this organ 
is conduplicate, just as in other papilionaceous corollas ; but 
after flowering, instead of resuming its first folding, it be- 
comes induplicate, or at least incurved, taking on a folding, 
as I said, exactly contrary to that which it had in the first 
place. It is this which gives to the mature spike or raceme 
that euriously imbrieated aspect which is universal in this 
genus, and unknown in any of its allies. There are scores 
of papilionaceous genera, admitted even by Bentham, which 
have less in habit and less of character to mark them than 
has Curysasprs. And even Linneus places the group upon 
an exact equality with Melilotus, as to rank, naming the 
groups respectively the Meliloti and the Lupulina, as if see- 
ing that if the Meliloti were to be a genus, so were the 
Lupulina. 
I had for some time been intending to emphasize my 
opinion of this group as a good genus, not doubting that 
Presl’s name was the one to be taken up, when, on looking 
over the pages of Desvaux's Flore de l Anjou, I discovered a 
group-name for these plants which is not in any of the bib- 
liographies or nomenclators, and which, at first glance, I 
took for a mere subgenus-name. Desvaux in his work fol- 
lows the fashion set by Lamarck and De Candolle, of writ- 
ing all Latin plant names as mere synonyms, as it were, 
