V. PLANTS WRIGHTIAN^. 15 



aribus plerisque oppositis, axillis obsolete barbatis ; inflorescentia terminali cymosa, 

 internodiis articulatis, floribus in dichotomiis sessilibiis ; " corolla purpurea." 



36. Talinopsis frutescens. (Tab. III.) Mountain valleys, seventeen miles east 

 of the Rio Grande, New Mexico ; Sept. — Plant apparently two feet high ; the 

 slender stems and branches entirely woody below, glabrous, except the minute hairs 

 in the axils. Leaves 6 to 1 2 lines long, scarcely a line wide, probably nearly terete 

 in the living state. Cyme few-flowered; the branches short, angled, articulated. 

 Flowers closely sessile in the forks, disarticulating and readily falling away in the 

 dried specimens. Sepals thin, very obtuse, several-nerved, Avith narrow scarious 

 margins. Petals not unguiculate, in anthesis longer than the calyx. Filaments appar- 

 ently all somewhat connate at the base, and further adnate, usually in fours, to the 

 base of each petal. Anthers of two oblong and discrete cells, without any connec- 

 tive, as in Talinum teretifolium, Portulaca, »&:c. Style shorter than the ovary, rather 

 longer than the somewhat dilated lobes or stigmas, which become gelatinous-con- 

 fluent after anthesis. The free central placenta reaches quite to the narrowed apex 

 of the cell, but is very slender, and not ovuliferous towards the summit : below the 

 middle it is crowded with ovules, in shape like those of Portulaca oleracea. Capsule 

 nearly half an inch long, covered, except the tapering summit, by the persistent, 

 and, in the dried state, at length subscarious calyx, one-celled, three-valved from the 

 apex : valves rather coriaceous, separating from a thin and white papeiy endocarp, 

 each of the three valves of which splits into two ; and the sutural nerves also in- 

 cline to separate. Seeds crowded on the central placenta, uncinate or arcuate; the 

 granulated testa rather loose and soft, but conformed to the thin internal integu- 

 ment, which is exactly conformed to the uncinate -arcuate, slender embryo ; the albu- 

 men being reduced to a mere vestige, or to a few loose starch-grains, within the 

 curvature. Radicle straight, when the seed is uncinate, or a little curved ; the coty- 

 ledons incumbently incurved, as in Talinum teretifolium, t&c, but sometimes, if I 

 mistake not, accumbent. — A genus closely allied to Anacampseros of South Africa, 

 and Grahamia, Gillies, of Chili, with much the habit of the latter ; from which it is 

 distinguished by the ebracteate flowers, the dissilient endocarp, and the wingless 

 seeds.* From Anacampseros it diff'ers in habit, in the persistent equal sepals, the 

 short style, the coriaceous valves of the capsule, which do not separate from the base 

 and fall away, &c. 



37. Trianthema monogyna, Linn. Mant. p. 69 ; Lam. III. t. 375. Eoad-sides 

 and banks of the Rio Grande, New Mexico ; Sept. 



MALVACE^. 



38. Callirrhoe pedata, Grai/, PI. Fendl, §• Gen. III. 2.]). 53. t. 118, excl. syn. 

 Edges of thickets, near San Marcos ; May. — The specimens sent by Nuttall to De 

 CandoUe and to Hooker, under the name of " Nuttallia pedata," are both the form 

 of his Callirrhoe (demum Nuttallia) digitata, with shorter lobes to the leaves, and I 



*The mature seeds of Gillies's specimens in the Hookerian herbarium furnish the means of complet- 

 ing the generic character of Grahamia, as follows : — Semina late membranaceo-alata, testa Isevi. Em- 

 bryo curvatus (radicula gracilis recta, cotylcdonibus accumbenti-incurvis) albumen parcum semicingens. 



