54 PITTONIA 



of which was once regarded as a species of AUium.^ Even so 

 conservative a botanist as Mr. Bentham adopted heartily, on 

 these express grounds, both Nothoscordnm and MitiUa. I 

 know of only one recent author who, in dealing with the 

 alliaceous plants and their analogues, has held fast by the old 

 principle of morphology or nothing, and has in word and 

 deed ignored the matter of odor and savor in connection with 

 thera, I allude to Eegel.*^ But he, by leaving it out of the 

 account altogether, and abiding thus strictly by an effete 

 Linnrean canon, has made his Allium to include something 

 like a score of species wdiieh perhaps not one of his con- 

 temporaries, and very likely no future author, will ever agree 

 with him in placing there. He will appear to have oifered to 

 the botanical world, instead of a natural genus, an artificial 

 congeries of species, several of wdiich will seem by no means 

 nearly related to the generic type, though closely analogous 

 to it. Not only Noihoscovdum and Mhilla^ but Hcspero- 

 scorditm and even Bloomeria are by this author consociated 

 generically with the onions. All except the first mentioned 

 of these agree in the possession of one character which one 



never meets with in any alliaceously scented plants, namely, 

 a multiplicity of bracts at the base of the umbel, whereas the 

 real alliums have a one- two- or rarely three-bracted spathe. 

 The last two have their pedicels jointed under the perianth ; 

 a second character by which they are distinguishable from 



AlJiffm. Again, the three have coated corms instead of the 



tunicated bulbs until lately assumed to be universal in Allium. 

 But now, in California— the very region which furnishes the 

 corm-bearing analogues of AUuim—v^e have two strongly 

 scented species of Onion that are quite anomalous in their 

 genus by their having corms and not bulbs. These are A. 



^f< 



their corms are 



Mil 



Wats 



Ph iii. 801 ; Greene, Pitt. i. 73, 165. 



Beuth. & Hook. f. Geu 



Alh'ormn adhuc Cognitorum Mouographia. E. Kegel, Petrop. 1875. 



