257 
ON TWO NEW GENERA OF SMILACINE/E. 
Bv BERTHOLD SEEMANN, Pu.D., F.L.S. 
(Pirates LXXXI. anp LXXXIII.) 
(Continued from p. 194.) 
Thinking that one or the other of the two species of Smilax which 
Mr. Horace Mann enumerates in his recently published List of Sand- 
wich Island Plants might belong to my new genus Pleiosmilax, I 
wrote to the author about them, and at the same time communicating 
to him my doubts that what he took for S. anceps, of Willd., was pro- 
bably not that species. With his usual courtesy he replied, in a letter 
dated Cambridge, Mass., June 25th, as follows :—‘ In answering 
your letter about Smilax, I must begin by acknowledging that what 
has been put on record respecting the Sandwich Island species in 
my ‘ Enumeration, is not entitled to much confidence. In the first 
place, I have never examined Smilax anceps from Willdenow’s locality, 
if I have from any other; in the second place, Remy’s n. 157 is 
certainly not what Willdenow describes as S. anceps; again, Mann 
and Brigham's n. 222 is not what Kunth describes as S. Sandwichen- 
sis, and both for the very sufficient reason that they have 18 stamens, 
and are, as far as I zow see, the same thing one with the other. There 
is nothing in our herbaria here which answers to your Pleiosmilax 
Sandwichensis, in case it never has more than 12 stamens, and no spiny 
plant which would answer to P. Menziesi. The only specimen of 
your Vitian Smilax (n. 631) is without flowers, and as you imply 
by the “ex parte” that there was something mixed with that distri- 
bution [Smilaz (?) trifurcata, Seem., with trifurcate peduncles and cy- 
 lindrieal receptacles—B. S.], I do not know which of the two it may 
be. The above completes the list of our Polynesian Smilacineze." 
I have no doubt that the species with 18 stamens is identical with 
my P. Sandwichensis, which may have sometimes three times as many 
stamens as perigonal leaves. In my Viti Flora the character will be 
thus extended, and also a lapsus calami be corrected, ascribiug (p. 193) 
10 sterile stamens, instead of 6, to the female flowers. The genus 
seems to be peculiarly Polynesian,—at least, on hastily looking through 
our herbaria, I have not found any congeners from elsewhere. But 
VOL. V1. [SEPTEMBER 1, 1868. | s 
