14 GENERAL REMARKS ON THE 



513] that the arilhis of the seed, whether general or partial, 

 is never found in the Dicotyledonous orders with mono- 

 petalous flowers, seems to have deternnned Jussieu ^ and 

 other French botanists to remove Polygala, remarkable for 

 its caruucula umbilicalis, from Rhinanthaceae, wdtli which 

 they had placed it, and to consider it, along with some 

 nearly related genera, as farming a distinct polypetalous 

 order. They appear to me, however, not to have taken 

 so correct a view of the structure of its Corolla as Adan- 

 son,^ who very justly observes that both in this genus and 

 Securidaca, which he rightly associates wdth it, the appa- 

 rently monopetalous corolla is made up of three petals, 

 united by means of the cohering filaments, the external 

 sutures remaining visible ; but Adanson himself has not 

 observed the minute rudiments of two additional petals in 

 Securidaca, the existence and position of which assist in 

 explaining the nature of the irregularity in Polygala, where 

 no such rudiments are found, but in which the corolla is 

 in every other respect very similar. A much nearer 

 approach to regularity, how^ever, takes place in an unpub- 

 lished genus, having five petals, which, though irregular, 

 are of nearly equal size and similarly connected by the 

 cohering filaments, likewise five in number. The essential 

 characters of the order Polygalene to which Krameria, 

 Monnina, Salomonia, and several unpublished genera also 

 belong, consist in the hypogynous insertion of its corolla, 

 which is always irregular, and frequently reduced to three 

 petals, connected together by the cohering filaments, w^hose 

 antherae are simple and bursting only at the top. 



reliquorum duobus anterioribus (respectu spicse) tertlo poslico. Petrda 3-5, 

 mediante tubo stamineo connexa, raib distincta. Stamina hypogyna, 8 (nunc 

 3, 4 vel 5) : filamentis inferne connatis in tubuluni liinc apertum inde jjetala 

 connectentem : Antherce simplices, basi iusertse, poro apicis dehiscentes. 

 Ovarium 2-loc. (quandoque 1-3 loc.) ovulis solistariis pendulis : Stylus 1 : 

 Stigma ssepe bilabiatum. Pericarpium ssepius capsulare, biloculare, bivalve, 

 valvis medio septigeris : nunc Drupa vel Samara. 1-2 sperm. Semina pendula, 

 iimbilico (in capsularibus) stropbiolato vel conioso. Embryo iuaxi albumiiiis 

 carnosi vix longioris, quandoque (prsesertim in pericarpiis clausis) deticientis. 

 Herbse vel Fiutices, utplurimum r/labri. folia simpllcia indivisa alterna ex- 

 siipulata. Flores spicaii sapiics terminales. 



^ Annales du mus. 14, p. 386, et seq. ^ Fam. des Plantes^ 2, p. 348. 



