Botanical Notices f rum Spain. 417 



lu' lias stated on tlie structure of the tibres; but I aiu not of his 

 opinion with reg;arcl to tlu; first degree of the development of the 

 leaf, seeing that at the beginning it does not appear to me to 

 have the form of a hood, Ijut rather that of a small crest {crista 

 or plica) with a vertical direction. 



My observations have been especially made on the Chamadorea 

 elatiur, the subterraneous caiidices of which arc; ramitied, and pre- 

 sent in their buds all the conditions necessary for the examination 

 of the origin both of the elementary organs and of the leaves, 

 branches and rcf/imes. These observations have also convinced 

 me that the bicarinatcd leaf, which often commences the forma- 

 tion of the leaves in the branches of the jMonocotyledons, and 

 which is repeated in the morphology of the spathelles of the Gra- 

 minece, is not formed by the coalescence of two leaves. It is only 

 a solitary leaf, furnished with an extremely thin lamina, and which 

 soon disaj)pears. You are aware that the natm-c of these leaves 

 has long been a subject of discussion by ]\I^I. Turpin and Robert 

 BroMTi, and recently by IM. llo])er, whose results agree with mine. 



LXII. — Botanical Notices from Spain. By Moritz Willkomm*. 



[Continued from p. 185.] 

 No. III. AuANJUEz, 8th of July 1844. 



Ox the ISth of June I left Valencia, which had detained me within 

 its walls longer than I wished. Immediately on leaving the charming 

 Huerta, you enter a wood of olive and St. John's bread ti'ees {Cerato- 

 nia Siliqua) with Ke)itro2}hi/num lanatum,T)eC ., growing in great plenty 

 beneath them, which accompanied us from here almost to Madrid. 

 So long as we were in the kingdom of A'alencia, the country was 

 very fertile, well-cultivated, and clothed with timber ; the broad val- 

 ley of Incar filled with rice-fields, the view of the romantic Sierra de 

 CuUera, and the environs of the friendly town St. Felipe, were in 

 particular among the fairest regions I had hitherto seen in Spain. As 

 soon, however, as you have traversed the Pass of Almansa, you come 

 into a desert, treeless, thinly-peopled, elevated plain in the province 

 of Albacete, belonging to the kingdom of Murcia ; low, uniform 

 hills of chalk alternating with wheat-fields and waste sterile plains 

 clothed with solitary specimens of an umbelliferous jilant v.hich ap- 

 peared to me to be Elceoselinum fatidum, Boiss., and with Retama 

 sphcerocarpa, Boiss. Still more desert and equally devoid of trees is 

 the country beyond Albacete, at the entrance into the poor province 

 of La Mancha, the villages of which lie so scattered that they resem- 

 ble heaps of stones and ruins more than human abodes. All this ren- 



* Translated from the Botanischc Zeitung, Nov. 8, 18H, and communi- 

 cated by A. Henfrey, F.L.S. 



