574 BULLETIN DE L'HERBIER BOISSIER. (5) 



Miquel, however, iu 1857 referred the species to Stylophorum rather 

 than to Chelidonium, while in 1858 Maximowicz proposed for the plant 

 generic rank under the naine Hylomecon. The view held by Miquel is 

 that which has of récent years i'ound most favouf and, if it be justified, 

 the necessity which has been shown for the réduction of Stylophorum as 

 a whole to Chelidonium niust involve pari passu the réduction of Hy- 

 lomecon. But there was no particular justification for Miquel's view ; 

 Hylomecon differs alike from Chelidonium and from Stylophorum in 

 the absence of bracteoles from the bases of its pedicels which, in place 

 of being fasciculate, are solitary. If, however, it was necessary to reduce 

 the plant to one or other of these two, then certainly it must have 

 been, as Thunberg originally proposed, to Chelidonium of which it has 

 exactly the fruit and seeds, and not to Stylophorum at all that Hylo- 

 mecon should be reduced. Any System of classification, however, which 

 recognises Chelidonium as distinct from Stylophorum must of necessity 

 adopt the view advocated by Maximowicz and recently re-adopted by 

 Prantl and Kundig, and accept Hylomecon as a genus apart. 



That it is impossible to do this is however made abundantly evident 

 by an examination of the three undoubtedly congeneric species that 

 make up the remaining section of the genus. The first of these is a 

 Hiinalayan species that was in 1855 accorded generic rank by Hooker 

 and Thomson under the name Dicranostigma lactucoides. This plant, 

 which combines the habit of a Glaucium with the fruit of a Stylopho- 

 rum, was in 1862 referred by Bentham and Hooker to Stylophorum, a 

 réduction in which Bâillon concurred in 1871 and which Hooker and 

 Thomson themselves adopted in 1872. By the absence of bracteoles from 

 the base of the pedicels this plant agrées with Hylomecon, to which 

 Prantl and Kundig would refer it; we thus have two species with precisely 

 the same inflorescence, one of which as to fruit agrées with Stylophorum 

 while the other agrées as to fruit with Chelidonium. But whereas Hylo- 

 mecon with the fruit of Chelidonium has the habit of Stylophorum and 

 the inflorescence of Dicranostigma, the latter with the fruit of Stylo- 

 phorum and the inflorescence of Hylomecon, has a habit all its own. 

 From the évidence of this species alone it is therefore impossible to say 

 without question that it should be reduced to Chelidonium or even, as 

 Bentham, Hooker and Bâillon propose, to Stylophorum or, as Prantl 

 and Kundig suggest, to Hylomecon. Another species however, from 

 Kansu. with exactly this habit but with a fruit like that of CJielidonium 

 and Hylomecon, was described by Maximowicz in 1876 as Glaucium 



