264 Mr. J. Miera on the Bignoniacese. 



Belostoma into the Catalpea. I have not seen the fruit of Asti- 

 anthus, nor are any satisfactory characters given of it : the hairy, 

 pappose villosity of its seeds constitutes a feature quite unknown 

 among the Eubignoniece, and the examination of its ovary leads 

 to the belief that it belongs to the Catalpea; indeed, in the 

 form of its capsule, the hairy covering of its seeds, and its 

 crowded, alternate or almost verticillate, linear, simple leaves, it 

 seems to be congeneric with Catalpa longisiliqua. I believe the 

 general habit of the plant to be a constant feature, and that for 

 purposes of generic distinction it offers a character equal in im- 

 portance to that of the structure of the flower or of the fruit 

 and seed. The presence, however, or absence of a cirrhus in a 

 conjugate leaf, which frequently falls off at the point of its arti- 

 culation with the petiole, or the substitution of a third foliole in 

 the place of a cirrhus, are not indications of much value ; for all 

 these three conditions commonly occur in the same plant among 

 EuUgnoniecB ; so that its adoption for a divisional character, as 

 employed by DeCandolle, has been quite useless. The presence 

 of simple and compound leaves in the same species, or even in 

 the same genus, must not be held to be a feattire of frequent 

 occurrence, as some botanists have inferred ; for I believe such 

 instances to be extremely rare : they occur chiefly among the 

 CatalpecE, and then only in the few cases where the folioles are 

 not petioled, or where the main petiole is winged, that is to say, 

 where the leaf is rather pinnatifid than truly pinnate : in such 

 cases the extent of division of a simple leaf may be varied, even 

 in the same plant, as happens in many other families ; but this 

 kind of division is only the modification of the simple serrated 

 leaf. In regard to this rule among EubignoniecB, Chamisso re- 

 lates that in his Bignonia pterocarpa and B. samydoides, the 

 leaves in the primary axil only are simple, in the second and 

 third axils they are deeply bifid, but in all the following nodes 

 they are, as usual, 3-folioIate, or cirrhosely conjugated : in the 

 simple leaf just mentioned, its petiole is as long as the petiole 

 and petiolule conjoined of the conjugate leaf, showing that this 

 circumstance arises from its stipuloid character, or is owing 

 solely to the suppression of one of the folioles from imperfect 

 growth, or its decadence in the early weak state of the plant, and 

 is not the complete development ; it cannot therefore be adduced 

 as an exception to the ordinary rule. 



There are a few species, among Eubignoniece, with heterophyl- 

 lous leaves, that offer an exception to the general rule ; these, 

 however, are not properly climbers, but are of an erect and 

 short stature; Bignonia brachypoda, DC, represents the type, 

 and among them may be classed three plants hitherto placed in 

 Cuspidaria. All the instances I have seen of these truly hetero- 



