124 Mr. J. Miers on some of the Heliotropieas. 



Pentacaryaj Hook. & Arn., and Euploca^ Nutt., appear to 

 be foreign to this group. Piptoclainaj Don, differs little from 

 Heliotr opium y except in its four broadly margined 1 -celled 

 nuts, frequently reduced to two by abortion ; it has five dis- 

 tinct sepals (not a tubular 5-toothed calyx, as Don states) ; it 

 has the habit of Coldenia^ but with terminal solitary spikes. 

 Halgarniaj Gaud., also appears alien to this group, because of 

 its campanular calyx and its incompletely 2-celled ovary with 

 two pairs of collateral ovules suspended from two semisepti- 

 form placentae. As the genera Cochranea and Messerschmidtia 

 hitherto appear almost unknown, I will here define them and 

 note their species. 



Cochranea. 



This genus, proposed by me in 1825, upon a Chilian plant, 

 was afterwards described as a variety of the Ileliopliytum 

 stenojphyllum^ Hook. & Arn. It differs from Heliophytum in 

 the peculiar habit of the plants (being short, erect, branching 

 shrubs) ; they have more woody (not fistulose) branches, which 

 are generally covered with numerous very fasciculated linear 

 leaves ; the genus also is remarkable for its very large elon- 

 gated stigma, two or three times the length of the style, or 

 even longer, having a broad annular peltate enlargement at 

 its base, and cleft at the summit, generally halfway down, into 

 two narrow subulate segments, which are entire, or more rarely 

 2-denticulated. The fruit consists of two bilocular nucules, as 

 in Heliophytum ; but they have not the same deep vacuities on 

 the inner face, and the seeds are enveloped in a distinct albu- 

 men. The inflorescence is not in long, solitary or geminate 

 spikes, as in Heliophytum^ but is corymbosely branched, at 

 first in subglobose heads, afterwards becoming more spread. 



Cochranea, nob. ; — Heliotropium et Heliophytum in parte 

 auct. — Sepala 5, lanceolata, erecta, plus minusve pilosa, 

 sestivatione imbricata, persistentia. Corolla hypocrateri- 

 formis, tuho cylindrico vel supra medium paulo infundibuli- 

 formi, fauce plicis 5 angustato, sub-5-gono, nervis 5 crassis 

 a medio loborum in angulis tubi decurrentibus et intra 

 faucem saspe glandulis totidem munitis, limbo expanso, vix 

 ad medium 5-lobato, lobis rotundatis cum plicis totidem alter- 

 nantibus, sestivatione valde imbricatis. Stamina 5, inclusa, 

 fere sessilia, tubi dimidia longitudine : filamenta brevissima, 

 circa medium tubi affixa ; antherce lanceolatge, 2-lob8e, mu- 

 cronatae, imo breviter auriculatae, in sinu dorsaliter affixse, 

 erectae, utrinque rima laterali dehiscentes. Discus parvus, 

 hypogynus, margine crenulatus. Ovarium in hoc impositum. 



