THALIA. 
Tux plant from which Linneus established this genus, in honour of John Thalius, an early German 
Botanist, had before been named Cortusa, by Plumier, who first discovered it, and gave a figure of it amongst 
his unpublished drawings; but that name has now been applied to a very different genus of plants. 
This genus agrees very nearly in its dry, rigid habit, and ganglionated leaves, with the preceding genus 
of Phrynium, but differs both from that and Maranta, in the formation of its stigma, which terminates in a 
long flat lip, extending to a considerable distance from the orifice of the style, and slightly bifid at the apex, 
furnished with a viscous substance to receive the globules of the pollen. This distinction is confirmed by 
the more obvious character of the seed, which is simple, smooth, ovate, regular, resembling a small acorn, 
and cannot be mistaken for those of either of the other genera before described. On this subject the learned 
Mr. Robert Brown, in his Prodromus Flore Nov. Hollandie, p. 307, has done me the honour to notice a 
statement in my Dissertation on Monandrian Plants, in the eighth vol. of Linnean Transactions, in which I 
have said that Thalia has two smooth, shining seeds, “ duo semina glabra, splendentia,” an assertion 
which he considers as erroneous, at the same time giving a very particular and interesting account of the 
internal cavities in the seed; omitting however to observe, that similar cavities are also found in the seeds 
of both Phrynium and Maranta. The origin of this often-repeated error, if it may be so considered, is not 
difficult to account for, when we observe, that the bractes in Thalia are biflorous, and consequently that 
each bracte incloses two seeds. That these seeds are smooth and shining, is a statement which, according to 
my observation, stands in no need of correction. 
Willdenow is certainly mistaken (Syst. Veg. vol. i. p. 16.) in supposing that the plant quoted by him from 
Rolander as Thalia Rotthoelli, is the geniculata, it appearing from his description, to be the dealbata. “ Caulis 
humanam staturam superans, lzevissimus, simplicissimus ;. folia cordata, acuminata, levia ; tela Indis Americanis, 
quibus animalia transfigunt, preebet heec planta ;” a description which agrees perfectly with the dealbata, the 
stem of which exactly resembles the shaft of an arrow, but is wholly at variance with the zig-zag growth 
of the geniculata. 
The Thalia canneeformis, cited by Willdenow, No. 3, and again in Enum. Berol., is excluded by Prof. 
Link, as being the Phrynium dichotomum of Roxburgh, and as having never been cultivated in the Garden 
at Berlin.—Link, Berol. i. p. 2. 
