NOETH AMERICAN LOTI. 135 



leaflets (4 or 6) to the leaf as a whole. And this group, 

 however extensive in America, is represented in Europe by 

 the old L. tetraphyllits, Linn. The three American species 

 above named have the narrow calyx-tube and the conse- 

 quently approximated petal-claws, as well as the somewhat 

 rostrate-attenuate keel of the most typical Loti ; but their 

 inflorescence is different. Their flo\vers are solitary and very 

 shortly pedicelled, the pedicel without a bract. However, 

 one species of the group, and that only lately recognized, 

 begins its flowering by solitary short-stalked flowers, and 

 ends by producing two peduncles from some axils, one of 

 these being long and bracted as in the sfrigosa series. The 

 short-pedicelled one-flowered subgroup, in so far as the 

 species belonging to it were known, made up the Lotus 

 section Microloius of Centham, and was proposed as a 

 distinct genus Anisolotus by Bernhardi. But the transitions 

 from these to the subgroup represented in NuttalFs H. 

 sfrigosa^ are as gradual as it is possible to imagine. So that 

 the Microlotus section, which all great masters in Europe 

 have held inseparable from Loins, is equally confluent with 

 what they have regarded as HosacJaa, And the long series 

 of species which here begins with L. WrangeJianus and ends 

 L, macranihus form a natural group, distinguished from the 

 first by dilated racliis and the few ineqiiilaterally distributed 

 leaflets, and from the typical Hosackia by this mark and the 

 dot-like glands in place of stipules; though L. Guada- 

 lupcnsis IS exceptional here, as having numerous leaflets 

 equally distributed on both sides of the scarcely dilated 

 racbis. Only its gland-like rudiments of stipules exclude it 



from the third group. 



It was on members of the third group that Hosackia was 

 first set apart as a genus. Herein reappear the manifest and 

 more or less foliaceous stipules of genuine Lotus ; but along 

 with this mark is associated a new leaf-character. Old World 

 " Lotus is trifoliolate. Typical Hosackia has leaves made up 

 of two or three, or even a greater number, of pairs of leaflets. 

 This did not prevent the elder Hooker from publishing the 



