ANNALS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



XLIV. — On two Species of a new South African Genus of 

 the Natural Order Rhizanthe^ of Blume. By the 

 Honourable W. H. Harvey. Communicated by Sir W. J. 

 Hooker, Reg. Prof. Bot. Glasgow, F.R.S., L.S. With 

 Plates XIX. and XX.* 



Having lately received from my valued friend Mr. Harvey 

 the drawings here represented, and the following descriptions 

 of two extremely interesting plants of Blume's Rhizanthea, 

 I cannot do better than lay them before the pubUc in the 

 state in which I have received them, without venturing to 

 offer any remarks of my owri respecting vegetable produc- 

 tions, whose structure, to be rightly understood, must be ex- 

 amined in a recent state, and such an opportunity is of rare 

 occurrence with any naturalist. Mr. Harvey indeed has not 

 had it in his power to compare his plants with the figures and 

 descriptions of allied genera of Richard or of Endlicher in his 

 valuable ^ Meletemata Botanica,' and hence he was led to 

 think it possible that they might be referred to Scybalium of 

 the latter author ; but the characters are extremely different in 

 the two, and I have little hesitation in adopting the name 

 suggested by Mr. Harvey, from the spoon-shaped form of the 

 segments of the perianth, Mystropetalon. It seems to belong 

 to the group of Balanophorea. Probably the Phelypcea san- 

 guinea of Thunberg, which Jussieu refers to Cytinus, and of 

 which Persoon makes the genus Hypolepis, may be one of 

 these ; but that plant is so ill defined by its discoverer, (who 

 appears to be the only person to whom it is known,) that we 

 cannot possibly come to any satisfactory conclusion ; yet " si 

 auctori aliqua fides habenda," as EndUcher remarks, it must 

 be something very different ; his being a " dioecious plant, 

 with a 6-lobed perianth, a short style and capitate stigma." 



* [These Plates will be found in the Supplement published with the pre- 

 sent Number. — Edit.] 



Ann. Nat. Hist. \o\. 2. No. 12. Fe*. 1839. 2d 



