166 Mr. J. Miers on the Bignoniacese. 



anomalous genus Oxycladus will naturally find a place, as also 

 the Monttea and Reyesia of Gay* — genera evidently allied 

 very closely to it, but of which little is yet known. We have 

 thus a third natural tribe, the Platycarpece. 



I have already described (in p, 161) the development that takes 

 place in the fruit of Jacaranda, which is quite analogous to that 

 of Fridericia, Calampelis, and Eccremocarpus. Here the ovary, 

 as in the Platycarpece, is normally constituted of two carpels 

 only, which are in hke manner placentiferous on their midribs, 

 but they are differently arranged, being placed with their pla- 

 centiferous lines opposed to each other, and conjoined pig. ]4. 

 by their sterile margins, as in fig. 14. The ovary is 

 therefore unilocular, with two opposite longitudinal 

 parietal placentse, and the result is a compressed, 1- 

 celled, 2-valved capsule, with the seeds attached to the 

 middle of the valves, which open along the sutural 

 line of union of the original carpels. These genera thus con- 

 stitute a fourth very natural tribe, the Eccremocarpece, a group 

 of greater extension than the subtribe of the same name of 

 DeCandolle. 



It appears to me that the fourth subtribe of DeCandolle, the 

 IncarvillecB, cannot be maintained. That group consists only of 

 Incarvillea and Amphicoma. In regard to the former genus, I 

 am able to confirm the accuracy of the details given by Correa da 

 Serra (Ann. Mus. viii. 391, tab. 63. fig. 2), which prove that the 

 structure of its fruit and the position of the seeds, in the only 

 known species, are precisely the same as in Argylia, which has 

 been noticed in page 160. The resilient process often observed 

 in the anthers, which seems like an arista, has been urged as a 

 distinctive character ; but this arises (as was long ago indicated 

 by Mr. Brown, PI. Jav. Rar. Ill), not from any emanation of the 

 connective, but from the rending of the thickened nerve-like 

 sutural margins of the anther-cells, which separate at the base 

 and remain attached at the apex, as I have shown to occur in 

 Argylia. It was upon this circumstance that Presl was induced 

 to found his Oxymitra, a genus which cannot stand. A similar 

 resilience in the anther-cells is occasionally met with in other 

 Bignoniaceous genera, for instance in the Pyrostegia of Presl 

 {Bignonia venusta). The general habit of Incarvillea is quite 

 that oi Argylia, as is acknowledged by DeCandolle; and there is 

 a remarkable similarity in its leaves, which are in like manner 

 bipinnatisected, with linear segments; it has also a terminal 

 raceme, with large handsome crimson flowers. Incarvillea, 

 therefore, may safely be placed among the Caialpea, and near 

 Argylia. 

 * Gay, Chile, iv. 416, tab. 51 ; ibid. 418, tab. 62; Walp. Ann. iii. 92, 93. 



