2S6 



EMPETIUCE^E. 



[Diclinous Exogens, 



Batide.e. — (Martins Conspectus, No. 70, p. 13; Meisner, Gen. p. 349.) Shrubs inhabiting salt 

 marshes, with opposite succulent leaves, having no stipules. Flowers $ ? in spikes. $ Scales 

 of the spike imbricated, each enclosing a bivalve membranous calyx, with the valves parallel with 



Fig. CXCVIII. 



the bract. Petals 4, unguiculate, very minute and membranous ; stamens 4, alternating with the 

 petals and longer ; anthers oblong, introrse, with linear thin filaments. ? Flowers very fleshy, 

 axillary to membranous reniform bracts, absolutely naked, arranged in a short 4-rowed cone, and 

 completely consolidated except at the top of the ovary. Stigma cushion-shaped, 2-lobed, with the 

 lobes right and left. Ovary 4-celled, with the cells in lateral pairs ; ovules solitary, anatropal, on 

 a long erect funiculus. Fruit a succulent cone ; the cells bony, but easily splitting at the two 

 sutures. Seed obovate, with a very thin testa. Embryo exalbuminous, straight, with oblong 

 plano-convex cotyledons, about twice as long as the conical inferior radicle. 



It will be seen that the above character is, in some respects, different from that given in the last 

 edition, from very bad crushed materials. The real structure of the genus has been lately ascer- 

 tained by Dr. Torrey, to whom I am indebted for a proof of an unpublished plate intended for the 

 Smithsonian contributions, out of which the details in the accompanying woodcut have been taken. 

 His observations I have been enabled to verify, so far as the $ flowers and the fruit are concerned, 

 by specimens given me by Sir Wm. Hooker. Young females I have never seen. The evidence now 

 accumulated seems, however, to confirm altogether the approximation of the genus to Empetmm, 

 with which it probably will be hereafter associated. 



Martins places the plant between Podostemaceaj and Salicacem ; Meisner after Urticacese; 

 Endlkiier among his unsettled genera, without a remark. Moquin Tandon contents himself with 

 excluding it from Chenopods. In an early edition of the present work this genus was absolutely 

 placed among the Order of Nettleworts, with the remark that " Batis has a common urtieaceous 

 fruit, and it agrees with many genera of the Order in its embryo having the radicle turned down 

 upon the cotyledons." This remark applied to the Batis aurantiaca of Wallich, which I had 

 inadvertently assumed to belong to the genus in which that learned Botanist had placed it. I 

 now find, however, that the shrubs called Batis by Roxburgh and Wallich belong to a totally 

 different genus, allied to Morus, and therefore the remark now quoted falls to the ground. There 

 is now no doubt that it belongs to the Euphorbial alliance, with which its diclinous flowers and 

 compound free ovary undoubtedly unite it. 



The salt marshes of the West Indies abound in this plant, which is sometimes gathered for the 

 purpose of mixing with West Indian pickles. Its ashes yield barilla in abundance. 



GENUS. 

 Batis, P. Br. 



Numbers. Gen. 1. Sp. 2 ? (There is in Sir W. Hooker's Herbarium a Texan plant in too young a 

 state for examination; but which may lie a second species of Batis ; and the plant figured in the 

 former edition of this work had certainly a 6-celled, not 4-celled, ovary.) 



Fig. CXCVIII.— Batis maritima. 1. a <? 

 the petals ; 4. one of the bracteal scales 

 7. a ripe cone ; 8. a section of it ; 9. a seed ; 10. an embryo 



cone ; 

 5. a $ 



2. a $ flower ; 3. the same forced open to show 

 cone ; 6. a perpendicular section of the same ; 



