56 PITTONIA. 



Doubtless the most universal organographic mark of Allium 

 is the bivalve marcescent-persisteiit spatlie ; and the plants 

 which Kegel seems to have placed in this genus with most 

 reluctance are those which eminent authorities had regarded 

 as of a distinct genus, Xcctaroscordum / for here tlie spathe, 

 albeit bivalvate, is herbaceous and deciduous. To this very 

 pronouncedly generic character are added, pedicels turbinate- 

 dilated at apex which receive and partly enclose the base of 

 the ovary, and seeds inserted on the broad bottom of the cell 

 instead of the usual axial placenta. In higher orders of even 

 exogenous plants, where more in the way of character is 

 requisite for the establishment of a genus than among 

 endogens, such an insertion of ovules would alone be suf- 

 ficient. "We have a good instance of this in Eobert Brown's 

 Lepfarrhena, separated from Saxifvaga on just this ground; 

 and it is a genus which J believe no one has yet called in 

 question. If a merely basal placentation alone make a 

 thoroughly valid genus in Saxifragacese, much more should it 

 liave that force in LiliaceiB. Lindley, in proposing Neciaro- 

 scordum^ makes upon it this very philosophical remark in 

 defense of his proposition. "It has been hitherto referred 

 most unaccountably to ^4/Zm/ff, Avith which it agrees indeed 

 in having au umbellate inflorescence, and a poAverful garlic- 

 like odor, but in hardly any other respect more than Orniiho- 

 galum, and the other genera of the Liliaceous order. The 

 characters assigned to it are amplv sufficient to fix it as 

 a most distinct and remaikaWe genus."' According to 

 Beutham/ Parlatore also made of it a new genus, Trigonca, 

 a little later, and apparently without knowing what Lindley 

 had done. But, as before the days of Lindley and Parlatore 

 this plant's garlicky odor had with botanists overborne all 

 the force of its most pronounced morphological characters, 

 and had kept it within the genus AUium, so it has done again 

 latterly; and this notwithstanding the logical and philo- 



^ Bot. Reg. xxii. under t. 1913, 

 ^ Geu. PI. iii. 804 



