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V. On the Lecythidacese. Bt/ John Miers, F.B.S., V.F.L.S., Bignit. and Commend 



Ord. Imp. Bras. Bosce, ^c. 



(Plates XXXIII.-LXIV.) 



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Read June 5tli, 1873. 



The great family of the MyrtacecB was divided by De CandoUe (in 1828) into 5 tribes ' : 

 1. Chamcelaucew, with a unilocular ovary and fruit; 2. Leptospermece, with a dry 

 multilocular fruit; both tribes confined to Australia; 3. Myrtece, with a softish 

 drupaceous fruit, more or less plurilocular, cosmopolitan in their origin, — aU these 

 tribes being distinguished by opposite leaves, marked by pellucid dots ; 4. Barringtonlem, 

 with a drupaceous fruit and alternate impunctate leaves, all natives of the vast regions of 



1 



Asia, Africa, the Malayan and Polynesian islands ; 5. Lecythldece^ with leaves always 

 alternate and impunctate, a hard fruit opening by an operculum, with many solid 

 nuciform seeds, or several imbricated winged seeds ; its flowers have numerous stamens 



r 



seated upon an expanded process quite peculiar to the group ; they are wholly confined 

 to the New World. Subsequently (in 1842) he united the two latter groups into his 

 4th tribe, Barringtoniece ^. 



Lindley (in 1830) ^ regarded the foregoing characters as of sufficient value to warrant 

 the separation of the Barringtoniacece and Lecythidacece as distinct natural orders — a 

 view originally suggested by E.ichard and Poiteau *. 



More recently Bentham and Hooker ^ combined the 4th and 5th tribes of De CandoUe 

 with their 4th tribe Barringtoniece, which they divided into 3 subtribes, 1. Barrlngtonicic, 



2. Lecythidece, 3. Napoleonece, 



I prefer the arrangement of Lindley for many strong reasons. The leading characters 

 which mark the LecytUdacece as a family distinct from Myrtacece are not only their 

 alternate impunctate leaves, but the epigynous (not perigynous) insertion of the stamens ; 

 they have also the large conspicuous petaloid development exclusively belonging to this 

 group, and upon which the stamens are seated; they have likewise fruits and seeds 



^ 



remarkably different from those of Myrtacece. 



De CandoUe first showed, in his analytical drawings of his first three tribes of MytHacece \ 

 that their numerous stamens, with long slender filaments, are all seated upon a 



perigynous disk agglutinated to the tubular portion of the calyx, the petals being fixed 

 at the same time upon the outer margin of this disk, often regarded as a part of the 

 calyx; and this portion, so united with the disk, forming the most conspicuous character 

 of the Myrtacece, is called the hypanthium, by Berg : it is persistent upon the fruits of 

 that group, the disk being marked by cicatrices where the fallen filaments were arti- 

 culated upon it. 



Prodr. iii. 207. » Mem. Myrt. p. 54. ' If at. Syst. p. 46 ; Veg. Kingd. pp. 739 & 754. 



* ilem. ilus. xiii. 141. 



» Gen. Plant, i. G05. 



• Mem. Myrt. pla. 1-8 for the Chamcelaucuce and Leptospermece, pis. 9-21 for the Myrte<x. 



VOL. XXX. 



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