18 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



forming a sort of involucre around the floral groups.^ This we can make 

 only a section of Miconia. The back of the staminal filament has a 

 short thick prominence at its base ; it is more pronounced in another 

 section of the same genus, formed of the single species Platycentrum 

 clidemioides, a shrub from Guyana and Trinity. The petals are 

 narrow, rigid, and at first contorted. By this last character this 

 plant connects with the true Miconia, Oxijmerisy whose petals are 

 always pointed and its anthers destitute or nearly so of a dorsal 

 basilar appendage. 



Nor, from its close affinity with Pachjanthus and Tetrazijgia, can 

 we separate Charianthus from Miconia, though it formerly gave name 

 to a separate tribe of this family {Charianthece) , The organs of 

 vegetation, the inflorescence, the gourdlike floral receptacle, with 

 ovary entirely adnate to its concavity, are precisely those of some 

 Miconias. It is true it is distinguished by its so-called campanulate 

 corolla ; it is really polypetalous, with the folioles rather wide and 

 obtuse; that is in fact the only character by which it can be 

 sectionally distinguished. 



From Miconia may strictly be separated Ancectocalyx hracteata, a 

 Cuban shrub, the habit and foliage of which recalls Octomeris, and 

 which is distinguished by the inequality (not constant) of its sepals, 

 five or six in number, covered with hairs. The ovary is in greater 

 part free, and the anthers are outwardly recurved. The flowers are 

 in short terminal subcapitate spikes, each occupying the axil of a 

 large concave bract, clothed with hairs like those of the calyx and 

 receptacle.^ 



Here are placed two old genera, established by Aublet in 1775, 

 which in fact difl'er little from each other. They have often been 

 noticed on account of the large vesicle at the base of the leaves, 

 but this is not constant in the species : they are Tococa and Maieta, 

 first observed in Guyana, and since found nearly throughout tropical 

 America. In the former, the flower, much resembling that of some 

 Miconias, has a tubular or campanulate receptacle, to the bottom of 

 which the ovary adheres for a variable extent, but not entirely. On 



* There is also an involucre of three bracts of Peru, said to have the habit of AnagalUs^ 



around Pleiochtton, believed to be Brazilian ; it with flowers organized like those of Miconia. 



surrounds a triflorous cyme, similar to that of They are solitary or nearly so, with subulate 



several species of Fachyajdhus : it is strictly sepals and borne on a sort of terminal shaft, 



only a section of the genus Miconia. near the middle of which two small bracteoles 



2 Catocoryiie linnceoideny a small creeping herb are inserted. 



