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Il. On Three New Genera of the Verbenaceæ from Chile and its adjacent regions. 
By Joux MIERS, F.R.S. $ L.S., Digmt. $ Commend. Ord. Imp. Bras. Rose, Se. $c. 
(Plates XXVI.-XXVIIIL.) 
Read May 6th, 1869. 
1. RHAPHITHAMNUS. 
THE type of this genus was first described in 1841, and figured in the Botany of 
* Beechey’s Voyage,’ under the name of Citharexylon cyanocarpum, by Sir William Hooker, 
specimens having been previously brought from Chile by Bertero, under the manuscript 
name of Póppigia cyanocarpa. The accompanying drawing was made by me in 1822 
from the living plant, which is mentioned in my ‘ Travels’ (1826) by the name of Duranta 
umbilicata. In its spinescent habit it approaches Citharexylon and Volkameria, but 
differs from those genera in many essential characters. Mr. Bentham (Ann. Nat. Hist. 
i, p. 488) considered it very distinct from Cithareaylon and more allied to Duranta, on 
account of its purple fleshy fruit: the name Póppigia has long ago been universally | 
adopted for a leguminous genus. The manner of its inflorescence is singularly different 
. from that of Oitharexylon ; in the latter genus it is always terminal, either in elongated 
racemose panicles, or in axillary leafless spikes, which spring from between the spines 
and petioles of the leaves: in Rhaphithamnus we see only two flowers oppositely pendent 
from the middle of each axillary leafless spine, or from three to five flowers as a very short 
raceme axillary in the young foliiferous branchlets, which spring from the spine and leaf 
of the main branch, and they are always pendulous. In Cithareaylon the corolla is 
either subeampanulate, or in a regular tube, with a border of five nearly equal segments ; 
in this genus it is funnel-shaped, gibbously ventricose on the anterior side above the 
middle, and contracted in the mouth, with a border of four segments,—one anterior, 
broader than two others, which are lateral; while the posterior segment is cleft more 
than halfway, into two linear parallel divisions. In Citharexylon the five stamens, some- 
times all fertile, are very short and inserted in the mouth of the tube or below it, with 
collateral adnate anthers slightly cordate at base; in Rhaphithamnus they are always 
didynamous, inserted below the middle of the tube, with long slender filaments, the 
lateral shorter pair being included within the tube, the anterior pair exserted beyond 
the mouth, the posterior filament being shorter and barren; the anther-lobes are oval, 
quite separated, and divaricately affixed upon a broad, very fleshy connective. The 
greatest difference is in the structure of the fruit: in Citharezylon it is obovate, covered 
by a somewhat dry pericarp, and seated on the much shorter cup-shaped coriaceous 
calyx; it encloses two bilocular osseous nuts, leaving a hollow space in the middle, occu- 
pied by the dried remains of the central columella; and near each anterior and posterior 
margin of each nut is seen a long cicatrical line, covering a foramen leading into each 
VOL. XXVIL 0 
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