AMERICAN SPECIES OF WULFENIA. 81 



F 



been received as a species of Veronica. In Veroiiica the 

 stems are leafy and the leaves usually opposite; the flowers 

 being axillary to either leaves or bracts, and either solitary 

 or clustered. In Wulfenia there is no proper stem above 

 ground, and the leaves are clustered as if radical but in 

 reality proceed from a short subterranean stem, while from 

 amid the leaves spring one or more scape-like spicate or 

 racemose-bracted peduncles. There is no character of flower 



or fruit by which Wulfenia may be distinguished from 

 Veronica. 



For about fifty years after the discovery and publication of 



Wulfi 



one species was known; 



Mr 



though under the influence of the botanical empiricism then 

 still prevailing in many quarters, as an inheritance from the 

 Linnaean age, several authors sought to transfer to Wulfenia 

 certain species of Veronica and Bonarota; all of which, as 

 being quite at variance with Wulfenia in respect to habit, 

 ^aje long sincej3een remanded to their proper genera. 



published, in the ScrophularinecB 

 IndiccB, two new species genuinely congeneric with TFwZ- 

 /e«ia— namely, W, Amherstiana and W. reniformis; the 

 one an Asiatic, the other a North American plant. Hence- 

 forward none could treat the genus as monotypical. And 

 now, within ten years from the time of issue of Bentham's 

 important paper thus briefly mentioned, three other plants, of 

 the Wulfenia facies and mode of growth, were discovered in 

 western North America. One of these, being destitute of a 

 corolla, was published by Sir William Hooker, as Gymnan- 

 dra rubra; a somewhat grave error, since the genus 

 Gymnandra, though somewhat resembling Wulfenia, is so 

 different in character as long to have been recognized as 

 belonging to another natural order of plants. The other 

 two American Wulfeuias were published in tlie tenth 



volume of DeCandolle's 



Mr. Bentham, as 



members of^a genus Synlhyris, now proposed by him as new 



l^^l^^^ all the North American species of 



to 



Wulft 



