KRAMERIACE.E. 227 



leaves alternate, destitute of stipules, simple and sessile, or 

 in one species palmately trifoliolate. Flowers purplish, ax- 

 illary, sometimes collected in a leafy raceme. Peduncles 

 bibracteate above the middle or next the flower, articulated 

 just above the bracts. 



Affinity, &c. Jussieu, who in the Genera Plantarum left Krameria 

 among the PlantcB incerlce sedis, afterwards arranged it with the genera 

 allied to Polygala, observing, however, that the structure of the flower 

 ditfered in some respects, and that the seed was destitute of albumen. Mr. 

 Brown, in the Appendix to Flinders'' s Voyage, directly referred it to the 

 Polygaleae ; but it is evident from his remarks upon the essential distinctions 

 between this family and the Leguminosas, that he regarded the odd sepal to 

 be posterior, and the three unguiculate petals to be anterior. This is the 

 view of their position which is taken by St. Hilaire and Moquin-Tandon, 

 and which is corrected by Hooker and Arnott, in the Botany of Beechey's 

 Voyage, who state, on the contrary, that " the relative position of the se- 

 pals and petals to the axis of the spike or bractea is scarcely different from 

 what exists in the Leguminosae, where Sir J. E. Smith seems disposed to 

 fix this genus." Endlicher, who adopts St. Ililaire's view of the position 

 of the floral organs, appends the genus to Polygaleae, So does Lindley, in 

 the Vegetable Kingdom, although he has copied Hooker and Arnott's figure, 

 with the diagram, in which the organs are laid dow^n in their real position. 

 Next, the relationship to Polygala has been maintained by Bentham (in 

 Plantm HartwegiancE, p. 13) upon new grounds ; he taking the four larger 

 sepals, tlie lower of which he conceives to be double, to constitute the entire 

 calyx, and the fifth or smaller one, which is sometimes wanting, as the sole 

 vestige of the corolla ; the three unguiculate petals and the two lateral sta- 

 mens he takes for the normal series of the androecium ; and the two upper 

 stamens, with the two fleshy organs, for an inner stamiiieal series. To this 

 it is justly replied by Professor Braun (in some remarks that are known to 

 me only by Dr. Engelmann's note, in Plantct Lindhcimeriance, p. 4), that 

 the fleshy petals cover the lateral stamens in aestivation, and therefore can- 

 not belong to an interior circle. Braun and Engelmann also state that in K. 

 lanceolata there is occasionally an anterior sterile filament alternate with the 

 lower petals, completing the symmetry of the flower, which they consider 

 as that of a pentandrous Legurainosa. When they remark that this lower 

 stamen answers to the free tenth stamen of papilionaceous flowers, however, 

 they only mean that it is the odd one, and analogous to it, not that it occu- 

 pies the same position ; for that stamen is posterior. This leads me to re- 

 mark, that the only important character I can mention to distinguish Krame- 

 ria from Leguminosae Caesalpinieffi (with which it appears exactly to accord 

 in the aestivation of the corolla), except that the stamens and petals are truly 

 hypogynous, lies in the order of the suppression of the stamens. When 



