VOL. XI, NO. 7.—BOTANICAL GAZETTE—JULY, 1886. 
The Genus Asimina. * 
ASA GRAY, 
One object of this communication is to ask for fruits of the 
southern shrubby species, which seem to have been rarely col- 
lected. I possess ripe fruit of only one of these, namely, A. par- 
viflora. Another object is to set right the generic character, in 
particular that of the estivation of the corolla 
ormerly one of the diagnostic characters of the order Ano- 
nace was the valvate estivation of the petals. Their evident 
overlapping in the flowers of our so-called Papaw was one rea- 
son for dissenting from the conclusion of the old Flora of North 
America, where Asimina was reduced to a section of Uvaria, and 
restoring the genus in the Genera Illustrated. Since then it has 
been ascertained that all the genuine species of Uvaria have their 
petals imbricated in the bud, as I had suspected of some of them, 
and that in this they accord with several other genera; so that, 
indeed, Mr. Bentham, in the Genera Plantarum, brought them 
together to form his tribe Uvariee. It was purely my fault, as is 
recorded on p. 68 of the fifth volume of the Journal of the Lin- 
nean Society, that he did not include in it the genus Asimina. 
Misled by an imperfect observation, making sections of the 
lower part only of some flower-buds, I informed him that I had 
“ascertained that they were truly valvate.” The fact is that, in 
this, as in many other genera of the order, the petals are of com- 
paratively late growth ; in the young bud they are distant, later 
their lower portion may come merely into contact and so give 
the idea of valvular estivation of each series; but when they 
same in the long- and narrow-leaved species which I name A 
angustifolia. The following notes which I made upon living 
plants of A. grandiflora, in Florida, in the spring of the year 
1875, show the same thing, with some difference. “ Onter-petals 
*Tssued May, 1886. Age - (Go 
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