292 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURAL FAMILY 



1. Salmen scandens, (Decand. 1. c.) in which the aristas 

 are equal and without any membranaceous border : stig- 

 mata remarkably dilated, tongue-shaped, obtuse, not hispid, 

 obscurely papulose, and apparently without any terminal 

 appendix : style dilated at the base into a hemispherical bulb 

 which is truncated underneath. 



2. Salmea Ursula, (Decand. 1. c.) whose aristae are un- 

 equal ; the inner, which is the larger, being furnished with 

 an evident ala ; the outer having a narrow margin only : 

 stigmata sharp and spreading : style dilated into an ovate 

 bulb which has an attenuated base. 



3. Salmea? curviflora (nob.) differs from both the pre- 

 ceding in the tube of its corolla being remarkably bent 

 outwards. In place of the inner arista there is a broad 

 obtuse wing, of which the inner margin is straight and 

 thickened, the outer continued down nearly to the base of 

 113] the pericarpium : the outer arista is winged : and besides 

 these, one or two minute processes are generally observable. 

 Stigmata revolute.'^ 



' In the remarkable character of its re-curved florets, as well as in some 

 other respects, this species of Salmea agrees with Spilanthus arboreus of George 

 Porster (in Commentat. Getting, ix, p. 66), of which he originally formed his 

 genus Laxmannia ; from a very erroneous view of its structure, however, 

 having described the Neotarium or glandula epigyna as a "germen superum;" 

 the real, though imperfect, germen with its two aristae as a " perianthium 

 bidentatum," and consequently referring the genus to Polygamia segregata. 



When he afterwards corrected these errors, and reduced Laxmannia to Spi- 

 lanthus, he did not discover that he had only the imperfect hermaphrodite or 

 male plant before him. 



That Spilanthus arboreus is really dioecious, I have ascertained from the exa- 

 mination of numerous specimens collected by Sir Joseph Banks in the Island of 

 St. Helena, where it forms a small tree called by the inhabitants White-wood. 

 It is Bidens arborea and perhaps also Spilanthus tetrandrus of Dr. Roxburgh's 

 List of Plants appended to General Beatson's Tracts on St. Helena; the 

 former being probably the female, the latter a starved variety of the male plant. 



In re-establishing Spilanthus arboreus as a genus, sufficiently distinct from 

 Bidens, Spilanthus, and Salmea, it will not, I conclude, be considered expedient 

 to recur to Forster's name Laxmannia, wliich as far as relates to this plant is 

 connected only with a series of blunders, was abandoned by the author himself, 

 and has since been applied to another genus already generally adopted. It may 

 be distinguished by the following character, and named 



Petrobium. 



Invokerum polyphyllum subduplici serie : exteriore breviore, foliolis pau- 

 cioribus. Beceptaculuih paleaceum, planiusoulum. Flosculi dioici, tubulosi. 



