88 BYTTNERIACE^. 



pitted. Embryo arcuate, or almost hippocrepiform, in fleshy 

 albumen : cotyledons foliaceous, flat : radicle slender, cen- 

 tripetal. 



Shrubs, or nearly herbaceous plants, usually hoary or hir- 

 sute with stellular pubescence ; the leaves alternate, stipulate. 

 Peduncles axillary, one - many-flowered ; the pedicels com- 

 monly articulated. Flowers yellow, or sometimes purple. 



Etymology. Dedicated by Tournefort to Paul Hermann, Professor of 

 Botany at Leyden in the latter part of the seventeenth century. 



Geographical Distribution. This genus belongs to the Cape of Good 

 Hope (where it is numerous in species) ; with the exception of two plants 

 recently detected in Mexico and Texas, which appear to be truly congeneric 

 with South African Hermanniae. Of one of them (No. 802 of Coulter's 

 Mexican collection) Mr. Bentham informs me he has long possessed a spe- 

 cimen from the Montpellier Garden, under the (apparently unpublished) name 

 of Hermannia Brasiliensis, Delile. It is most likely the " H. inflata, Link 

 <Sj- Otto,^^ mentioned in Steudel as a Mexican species, as its fructiferous 

 calyx is remarkably inflated. The other species (in which the calyx is not 

 thus inflated) was gathered by Dr. Gregg near Buena Vista, in Northern 

 Mexico, and previously on the Rio Colorado in Texas, north of lat. 31°, by 

 Mr. Lindheimer ; from whose indigenous specimens it is here figured. It 

 has been raised from his seed in the Botanic Garden of Harvard University ; 

 but the plants have not yet flowered. The corolla is purple or violet-colored 

 in both species. 



PLATE 135. Hermannia Texana, n. sp. ; — a branch of the natural size, 

 in flower and fruit. 



1. Diagram of the flower in a transverse section. 



2. A petal enlarged ; inside view. 



3. A stamen magnified, seen from the outside. 



4. Inside view of the same. 



5. Vertical section through the ovary, tube of united filaments, receptacle, 



&c., magnified. (The tube of filaments is more or less connate 

 with the stipe of the ovary.) 



6. Transverse section of a dehiscent capsule, enlarged. 



7. A seed, more magnified. (Testa strongly pitted.) 



8. Vertical section of the same through the albumen and embryo. 



9. Embryo detached entire, with the cotyledons separated, more magnified. 



