NEVIUSIA ALABAMENSIS. 

 THE NEVIUSIA. 



NATURAL ORDER, ROSACE/E. 



NEVIUSIA AlABAMENSIS, Asa Gray. — Calyx bractless, spreading, five-parted, with the lobes 

 leaf-like, incisely serrate and persistent. Corolla none. Stamens indefinite, inserted in 

 several rows on the thin disk which lines the bottom of the calyx; filaments filiform. 

 Ovaries two to four, sessile : style nearly terminal, filiform. Ovule single, pendulous, 

 anatropous. Achenia drupaceous. Cotyledons oval, flat. Embryo included in thin, 

 fleshy albumen. Radicle superior, inflexed — accumbent. (Chapman's Flora of the South- 

 ern United States.) 



HE pretty plant we now illustrate has more points of in- 

 terest than is usual with our wild flowers. Up to 1857 it 

 was wholly unknown, and it has not been found in any other place 

 than where it was originally discovered. It was detected in the 

 year mentioned, by the Rev. Dr. R. D. Nevius, a missionary of 

 the Protestant Episcopal Church, and an ardent and acute botan- 

 ical observer. Noting that it was different from any plant 

 described in botanical works, he sent specimens to Dr. Asa Gray, 

 ■who found that it was not only new, but represented an unknown 

 genus, which he named Neviusia, after the discoverer, and Ala- 

 bamensis, from the State in which it is even yet only found. 



In a letter to the author, written in 1877, Dr. Nevius gives 

 some interesting facts regarding the location of the discovery. 

 He says: "I first noticed it, I think, on the North river, an 

 affluent of the Black Warrior, a short distance above Tuscaloosa, 

 in Alabama, and at its mouth. It grew in a dense thicket in the 

 first loose soil under a long cliff of rock which is exposed by the 

 wearing away of the bank. It has a southern exposure at that 

 place, and grows about seventy-five or one hundred feet above 

 the level of the plain or bench below. As its habit is to make 



