

OF PLANTS CALLED COMPOSITE. 285 



belong to the same genus, as their habit seems strongly to 

 indicate, there can be no reason to separate from them 

 Alcina of Cavanilles, erroneously considered by Willdenow 

 as a species of Wedelia : and Dy sodium of Richard, pub- 

 lished in Persoon's Synopsis, though differing from all the 

 others in the form of its pericarpium and in that of its 

 receptacle, must also be reduced to this genus. If, how- 

 ever, the part described by Linnaeus as pappus in Melam- 

 podium americanum be really such, and if the pericarpium 

 itself vary so widely both in form and surface, it would be 

 inconsistent with the principles of division generally adopted 

 in Compositae, to unite all these plants into one genus, 

 notwithstanding their great resemblance in habit as well as 

 in the other parts of fructification; and it would be at 

 least in vain to look for any combining character in this 

 part of their structure. 



A careful examination of the female flowers, especially in 

 an early stage, removes this difficulty, by proving that the 

 supposed external coat of the ovarium, with its various 

 inequalities of surface, some of which have been described 

 as pappus, is in reality an involute bractea or foliolum of 

 the involucrum, like that of Microjjus, completely inclosing 

 the ovarium, but from which in several species of the genus 

 it is entirely, and in others in great part, distinct. 



Craspedia 



first appears in Forster's Prodromus Florulae Insularum 

 Australium, where an essential generic character is given, 

 but no description of the species. The genus is adopted 

 and the character received without remark by Willdenow 

 in his edition of Species Plantarum, and by Persoon in his 

 Synopsis. Among George Forster's drawings of subjects 

 of natural history made in Cook's second voyage, and qog 

 now in the library of Sir Joseph Banks, there is a figure of 

 this plant, from which it appears that he originally referred 

 it to Stcehelina ; a proof that he had not at that time very 

 carefully examined it. It is not improbable therefore that 

 he afterwards proposed it as a distinct genus, belonging to 



