SL ead, 
Mr. J. Miers on the Calyceracez. 175 
only upon a species of Boopis previously described by Péppig 
and Lessing. In the same manner, the Acarpha of Dr. Grise- 
bach * must be referred to Boopis, and the Gymnocaulust of 
Dr. Philippi to Calycera, upon grounds that will presently be 
shown. 
The Calyceracee have many characters in common with the 
Composite. Their flowers, often intermixed with setaceous palez, 
are aggregated upon a general receptacle, which is enclosed 
within an involucre of bracteiform leaflets more or less combined 
in one series : the ovary is constantly inferior ; the calyx, which 
is adnate to it, has a free, generally 5-toothed border ; the corolla 
is tubular, the lobes of its border being valvate in estivation, 
and possessing the same peculiar system of nervation as the 
Composite ; their anthers, in like manner, are syngenesious ; 
their ovary is also inferior, 1-celled, and 1-ovular ; and the fruit 
is a dry achenium surmounted by the indurated and enlarged 
teeth of the calyx. They differ essentially, however, in the 
structure of the ovary, the ovule being suspended from the apex 
of the cell (not erect) ; in their achzenia being crowned by the 
calycine teeth, often elongated into rigid spines (not surmounted 
by a pappus) ; in their seeds containing a copious albumen, and 
a terete embryo, the radicle of which usually exceeds the coty- 
ledons in length, the radicle pointing to the apex of the cell 
(not to its base) ; their anthers, too, are deficient of the apical 
expansion of the connective, usually found in Composite. They 
are all herbaceous plants, natives of South America, mostly 
growing in elevated and arid situations in the Andes of Chile; 
two species extend into the Cordillera of Peru; three are found 
near the Straits of Magellan ; seven others on the eastern por- 
tion of the continent, bordering on the Rio de la Plata and the 
Rio Grande; and another extending beyond the line of the 
Southern Tropic, growing along the sea-shore of Rio de Janeiro, 
and as far to the northward as Bahia. 
Some points of their structure are yet considered to be ambi- 
guous, opposite views in regard to them having been held by 
Brown and Richard, which I will endeavour to reconcile and 
explain. The stamens, always equal in number to, and alternate 
with the segments of the corolla, have their anthers free at their 
summits, but confluent by their margins towards their base 
into a syngenesious ring: the summits of the five filaments are 
quite free, but are combined below into a cylinder, which is 
adnate to the tube of the corolla above its middle, while the base 
of this tube is seated upon a prominence which crowns the sum- 
mit of the ovary, and bears the style. Upon the tube of the 
corolla, just below the apparent attachment of the free portion 
* Diagn. Pl. Lechler, p. 38. t+ Linnea, xxviii. p. 705. 
