38 Dr. Arnott on the Germs Langsdorffia. 



tivum. Stylus^ filiformis, loevis, aplce crassior ac truncatus, structura sub- 

 cellulari, ex apice ovarii attenuato tarde deciduus, ovario colore pallidior : 

 stylorum apices glandulam supra descriptam vix superantes. 



Richard, in his account of the genus, considers the female 

 flowers hitherto known to be imperfect : " nescio quid imper- 

 fecti in omnibus trium capitulorum a me dissectorum floribus 

 femineis deprehendens, ad suspicandum aha existere capitula 

 perfectioribus onusta floribus moveor." Most other botanists 

 adopt the same view. I have never in the Indian species 

 been able to find so perfect a perianth as Richard found in 

 that from Brazil; and although the reputed ovaria were much 

 more SAVoUen than those which Richard saw, I cannot find the 

 smallest trace of an ovule. I should therefore have thought it 

 probable that those female capitula which arise from the same 

 rhizoma as the male, were always imperfect, and that the fer- 

 tile ones were to be found on a different plant, perhaps ac- 

 companied by imperfect males ; but Dr. Wight has observed 

 the L. indica in different places and at different times, and 

 he seems never to have detected any other than the form 

 above described. Blume, if indeed his Balanophora elongata 

 be the same as that from Dr. Wight, while he inserts it in 

 Balanophora, makes no exception as to the imperfection of any 

 of the female flowers : but that plant is referred doubtfully 

 by Endlicher to Cynopsole, a new genus, which is said to be 

 dioecious (the male only being known), but which may with 

 equal probability be held to be monoecious, and would then 

 only differ from Langsdorffia indica by " flores masculi singuli 

 bractea canaliculata excepta," instead of these bractea or 

 paleae being clavate upwards while their membranaceous bases 

 intersect each other and form cells. Blume also says of his 

 plant that it is dioecious, but from the account given in the 

 generic character of the structure of the monoecious species, 

 it is obvious that by dioecious he only alludes to the capitula 

 being unisexual. 



Further observations may thus prove the three to be one 

 and the same species. Whether we suppose that Blume saw 

 perfect females, and that he found the structure as in the 

 genus Balanophora, where the ovaria are "one-ovuled and 

 attenuated upwards into a setaceous style," or that the style 



