132 ON SOUTH-AMEEICAN APOCYNAOE^. 



bright green and sparsely pilose above, sulcate on the midrib, of a yellowish tinge 

 beneath, with many snow-white hairs, midrib and nerves reddish, 8-12 lines long, 

 2-3 lines broad, on slender pilose petioles ^ Kne long ; flowers solitary in many of the 

 axils, on a peduncle 6 lines long, bearing in its middle 5 erect verticillate bracts the 

 size and shape of the sepals ; sepals linear-lanceolate, acute, of a reddish hue, sabpilose, 

 7 lines long, 1 line broad ; corolla large, hypocrateriform ; tube 6J in. long, funnel- 

 shaped in the mouth for y of its length, narrowly cylindrical below, IJ line broad, and 

 of a greenish hue; 5 segments, rotately expanded, obliquely trapezoid, 15 lines long, 

 10 lines broad, the sinister margin thickened and of a bright red colour, archingly and 

 dextrorsely curved, the rest pure white, and crispate on the margin ; they close into a 

 pentagonal twisting cone in the evening and again expand on the next morning ; the 

 stamens are inserted on a pilose ring at the constriction of the tube ; the filaments are 

 very short, the anthers oblong, yeUow, 4 lines long, obtuse at the base, curving outwards, 

 cohering by agglutination with the clavuncle, terminated by triangular membranes, all 

 connivent in the axis ; disk of 5 erect, acute lobes, half the length of the 2 acute oblong, 

 subpilose ovaries ; style slender, 4i^ in. long, bearing a green pentagonal oblong 

 clavuncle, having a lacerated peltate membrane at its base, and terminated by 2 minute 

 stigmata; follicles 2, erect, subterete, striate, subtorulose, afterwards glabrous, 8 in. long, 

 2 lines broad ; pericarp subcoriaceous, red outside, yellow inside, these nitid and finely 

 striate ; seeds many, reddish, compressed, dorsally striate, subpilose, channelled on the 

 ventral face, with a longitudinal raphe, 4 lines long, 2 lines broad, dorsally striate, sub- 

 pilose, crowned with an apical coma 15 lines long, consisting of many dense erect reddish 

 hairs ; embryo in corneous albumen, with a superior terete radicle ^ line long and oblong 

 subobtuse cotyledons 2 Hnes long, l^- lines broad. 



Drawings of this species, in flower and in fruit, with the analysis of the flower, fruit, 

 and seeds, are given in Plate XVII. , 



Species excluded : — 



Macrosiphonia hypoleuca, Miill. , . . = Rhodocalyx hypoleucus, nob. 

 M. suaveolens. Mart. & Gall Bhodocalyx maveolens, nob. 



Stipecoma. 



This genus was elaborated by me in 1837, under another name, for some new species 

 which I had collected, and illustrated by drawings and analyses taken from the living 

 plants. Dr. Miiller published the genus in 1860, upon Echites peltigera, A. DC, which 

 he described and figured in the ' Elora Brasiliensis,' not recognizing two other species 

 described by him under Echites. His generic name is not quite consistent, because the 

 coma of the seed is not stipitated, properly speaking, but springs from the long rostrate 

 summit of the testa. Messrs. Bentham and Hooker (Gen. ii. 724) quite misunderstood 

 the carpological characters of the genus, which "they had derived from Miiller, who was 

 unacquainted with the real structure. The following is a more correct diagnosis. 



