386 Mr. J. Micrs on the Bignoniaceae. 



and so I venture to hope that Mr. Reeve will allow this discussion 

 to come to an end, and that our united efforts may tend to the 

 advancement of science. 



I am, Gentlemen, 



Yours most respectfully, 

 Imperial Museum, Vienna, Edw. Suess, 



March 17, 1861. 



XLVI. — Observations on the Bignoniaceae. 

 By John Miers, F.R.S., F.L.S. &c. 



[Continued from p. 268.] 



Adenocalymna. 



This genus was first proposed by Prof. Von Martins, for a 

 group of climbing plants, mostly from intertropical Brazil, which 

 are distinguished by the presence of peculiar greenish glands, 

 almost constantly upon the calyx, and more rarely upon the 

 corolla, whence its generic name. Its branching stems are 

 generally rugose, and spotted all over with hollow lenticels, and 

 often pitted at the nodes with crowded porous dots. The oppo- 

 site leaves are 3-foliolate when the terminal leaflet is somewhat 

 larger, or they are conjugate with an intermediate cirrhus, both 

 conditions often existing in the same plant. The inflorescence 

 is either axillary in short racemes, or it is terminal, when some- 

 times, by the abortion of the superior axillary leaves, it forms a 

 pyramidal or elongated panicle. At the axils, within the base 

 of each petiole, there is constantly seen a pair of simple stipuloid 

 leaflets, generally reduced to the size of bracts, which are fur- 

 nished with glands similar to those of the calyx. The flowers 

 are large and showy, covered with velvety down, and are of a 

 dull-yellow colour, or sometimes purple. The fruit has been 

 hitherto unknown ; but I was fortunate enough to find it : it is 

 very different from that of any other Bignoniaccous genus, both 

 in its form and the structure of its seeds. The capsule in the 

 two species I met with is quite cylindrical, about 6 inches long, 

 and 1^ inch in diameter, formed of two thick coriaceous valves, 

 which split open along the edges of the flat dissepiment, as in 

 all EuhignoniecE. The seeds, so remarkable in their form and 

 structure, have been described in a preceding page (p. 156). 



I have not seen any of the plants referred by DeCandolle to 

 his genus Pachyptera, with the floral structure of which he was 

 unacquainted ; the genus was established merely on the peculiar 

 development of the seed, the expanded margins of which are 

 thick and coriaceous, like the central discoid portion. This 

 structure, among the Monostictides, occurs only in Adenocalymna^ 



