124 Mr. J. Miers on some of the Heliotropiee. 
Pentacarya, Hook. & Arn., and Huploca, Nutt., appear to 
be foreign to this group. Péptoclaina, Don, differs little from 
Heliotropium, except in its four broadly margined 1-celled 
nuts, frequently reduced to two by abortion ; it has five dis- 
tinct sepals (not a tubular 5-toothed calyx, as Don states) ; it 
has the habit of Coldenia, but with terminal solitary spikes. 
Halgarnia, Gaud., also appears alien to this group, because of 
its campanular calyx and its incompletely 2-celled ovary with 
two pairs of collateral ovules suspended from two semisepti- 
form placente. As the genera Cochranea and Messerschmidtia 
hitherto appear almost unknown, I will here define them and 
note their species. 
CoCHRANEA. 
This genus, proposed by me in 1825, upon a Chilian plant, 
was afterwards described as a variety of the Heliophytum 
stenophyllum, Hook. & Arn. It differs from Heliophytum in 
the peculiar habit of the plants (being short, erect, branching 
shrubs) ; they have more woody (not fistulose) branches, which 
are generally covered with numerous very fasciculated lmear 
leaves; the genus also is remarkable for its very large elon- 
gated stigma, two or three times the length of the style, or 
even longer, having a broad annular peltate enlargement at 
its base, and cleft at the summit, generally halfway down, into 
two narrow subulate segments, which are entire, or more rarely 
2-denticulated. The fruit consists of two bilocular nucules, as 
in Heliophytum ; but they have not the same deep vacuities on 
the inner face, and the seeds are enveloped in a distinct albu- 
men. The inflorescence is not in long, solitary or geminate 
spikes, as in Hel’ophytum, but is corymbosely branched, at 
first in subglobose heads, afterwards becoming more spread. 
CocHRANEA, nob. ;—Heliotropium et Heliophytum in parte 
auct.—Sepala 5, lanceolata, erecta, plus minusve pilosa, 
estivatione imbricata, persistentia. Corolla hypocrateri- 
formis, tubo cylindrico vel supra medium paulo infundibuli- 
formi, fauce plicis 5 angustato, sub-5-gono, nervis 5 crassis 
a medio loborum in angulis tubi decurrentibus et intra 
faucem sepe glandulis totidem munitis, limbo expanso, vix 
ad medium 5-lobato, lobis rotundatis cum plicis totidem alter- 
nantibus, estivatione valde imbricatis. Stamina 5, inclusa, 
fere sessilia, tubi dimidia longitudine: jilamenta brevissima, 
circa medium tubi affixa; anthere lanceolate, 2-lobe, mu- 
cronate, imo breviter auriculatee, in sinu dorsaliter affixe, 
erecte, utrinque rima laterali dehiscentes. Déscus parvus, 
hypogynus, margine crenulatus. Ovariwm in hoc impositum, 
