Mr. J. Miers on the Genus Rhabdia. 431 



Tliis is a shrub of much smaller dimensions and of low 

 straggling growth, collected at a place called the " Plumerillas," 

 in the Travesia not far from Mendoza : it is somewhat prostrate, 

 with several tortuous spreading branches, from 9 inches to a 

 foot long ; the younger branches are cinereous, very rough, 

 and more flexuous than in the preceding species ; the leaves 

 are less than half the size of those of the other species, more 

 shortly cuneated, horizontally spreading ; its flowers are never 

 axillary, always terminal upon short axillary branches ^-1 inch 

 long, furnished with from two to four small leaves ; the axils 

 are much closer, only 1 or 2 lines apart. The leaves ordina- 

 rily are 3 lines (rarely 5 lines) long, 2 lines broad across the 

 lateral teeth, ^ line broad immediately below them, and thence 

 linear to the base. The pedicel of the terminal solitary flower 

 is very short ; the calyx (including the teeth ^-1 line long) is 

 3 lines in length, the teeth being of a long triangular form, 

 flat inside, without any intervening membranes ; the tube of 

 the corolla is 3-4 lines long, the lobes of the border 2 lines 

 long, 1 line broad ; the filaments, dilated in the lower moiety, 

 are fixed in the middle of the tube, 3 lines long, and therefore 

 but little exserted ; the ovary is 1 line in diameter, supported 

 on a narrow stipitate support j line long ; the lower portion of 

 the style is 3 lines long, its branches 2 lines long ; the ten 

 appendices (nearly equal in size, setiform, 1 line long) form 

 an annular fringe round the base of the corolla. The drupe is 

 more globular than in the preceding species, and the persistent 

 calyx, which half encloses it, is split on one side to the base. 



Rhabdia. 



This genus was founded by Von Martins, in 1826, upon a 

 Brazilian plant which he described and figured in his Nov. 

 Gen. ii. 136, tab. 195 ; he placed it in EhretiacecBj where also 

 it has been arranged by De Candolle and other botanists. 

 Fresenius, in his memoir published thirty-one years afterwards 

 in the ^ Flora Brasiliensis,' absolutely ignored the peculiar 

 seminal structure, which had been so well described by Von 

 Martins. His diagnosis of Rhabdia is very short and unac- 

 countably incomplete ; he merely regarded it as an aberrant 

 genus between Heliotropiece and Cordiacece. My own obser- 

 vations fully confirm the accuracy of the peculiar struc- 

 ture of the fruit and seed as it is minutely described in the 

 work of Von Martins. The placentation of the ovary is like 

 that of Amerina ; that is to say, it is unilocular, with two op- 

 posite parietal placentae, which project inwards towards the 

 centre, where they do not meet, but are bifidly spread and 



