6 Mi-. J. Miers on the genus Lycium. 



less funnel-shaped above, with a border sometimes narrow, having 

 five small rounded imbricated lobes, or frequently these divisions 

 ai'e longer, being often continued through the whole infundibu- 

 liform portion of the tube to the insertion of the filaments, in 

 which case they become wholly exserted after the expansion of 

 the border : these features are so constant in different individuals 

 as to afford excellent sectional characters. The corolla, although 

 very often symmetrical in its form, is not constantly so, for in 

 many species the tube is more or less inflated upon the side 

 opposite to that of the more exterior lobe of the border, and 

 both stamens and style are somewhat declined towards this gib- 

 bous portion : one, two or three of the stamens are often consi- 

 derably shorter than the others, which do not exceed the total 

 length of the corolla ; they are sometimes even still shorter, and 

 wholly included within the tube after the expansion of the 

 border. The filaments are generally geniculated, or suddenly 

 bent at the point of their insertion into the tube of the corolla, 

 and again curve a little above this point into an erect position, 

 and here they are often furnished with a dense globular tuft of 

 white hairs, which form a fornix closing the mouth of the con- 

 tracted portion of the tube around the base of the style ; in 

 several cases the filaments at their base are distinguished by a 

 fiat adnate fleshy process, fringed on its margin, bearing some 

 analogy to the tooth of the filaments in Cestrwn, or the gland- 

 like scale in Zygophyllacca ; they are sometimes altogether 

 smooth. The ovarium is seated upon a short columnar support, 

 to which the base of the corolla is persistently adnate : after 

 impregnation, the corolla breaks away by an irregular circum- 

 scissile line, leaving a free persistent cup, which encircles the 

 lower moiety of the ovarium : in the details given of many species 

 of Lycium by M. JDunal, he describes this as a dentate cupular 

 proper disk, but that is certainly a mistake ; this circumscission 

 of the corolla is a constant feature, and may always be relied 

 upon as a good generic character, but this fact has hitherto 

 escaped attention. The base of the ovary, enclosed within this 

 induvial cup, is at the same time marked by a glandular enlarge- 

 ment of a different colour, which is a true adnate hypogynous 

 disk, although sometimes this is almost obsolete. The ovarium 

 is uniformly 2-locular, with numerous ovules in each cell attached 

 to a thickened placenta adnate to the dissepiment. The berries 

 supported on the small persistent calyx are scarlet, black, or 

 blue : they contain several flattened reniform seeds, surrounded 

 by pulp, and attached to the central placenta : their slender 

 terete embryo, enclosed in solid albumen, is spirally helical, that 

 is to say, it consists of more than a single volution, which is not 

 coiled in a plane, but rises in the middle in a slightly conical 

 form like the whorl of a snail-shell ; the radicle, equal in length 



