66 AMARANTACE^. 



form with oblong flower-heads. — Stem herbaceous, with creeping branches, radicant at the 

 nodes ; leaves fleshy, sometimes enlarged a little towards the top ; flower-heads 6"'-4"' diam., 

 often shining: flowers H"'-V" long. — Hab. Jamaica!, Pd., Ma(f., March; S. Vincent!, 

 Guild.; [S. Thomas!, Guadeloupe]; Bahamas!, Swains.; Trinidad!, Cr., on the sandy 

 seashore; [Cuba! to BrazU!, Florida!, Cape Verde Islands I, Senegambia!]. 



10. LITHOPHILA, Sid. 



(Iresine, sect. Philoxerus, Moq., partim. Alternanthera, sect. Dassiera, Moq., partim.) 



Sepals 5, two interior narrower, and opposite the fertile stamens, supported by, but not 

 enveloped within short wool. Stamens 2 : anthers oblong or linear ; basilar cupnle short, 

 with three sterile filaments, which are opposite the outer sepals. Sti/le bifid or bipartite. 

 Pericarp utricular. — Leaves sudsessile lowest rosular: axils wooW^; flowers capitate, 

 forming subglobose, axillary and terminal heads: bracts keeled; sepals white, scarious to 

 the middle, membranaceous above and on the margin, usually with a greenish, suprabasilar 

 blotch on each side of the midrib. 



R. Brown was the only botanist who had examined this genus after Swartz, and though 

 he mentioned it in speaking of Philoxerus [Prodr. p. 416), it was considered as of doubtful 

 affinity by all subsequent writers, and consequently excluded from the Amarantacea. 

 There was, however, no reason whatever for such doubts, as 1 was happy to learn from the 

 complete manuscript descriptions which R. Brown (some months before his death) had the 

 kindness to communicate to me, and from the original specimens, contained in the Banksian 

 collection : from these and other materials it is satisfactorily proved that IMhophila has several 

 synonyms among Moquin's Amarantacece. According to Moquin's systematic views, their 

 proper place would have been in his section Philoxerus, where, indeed, one of the forms is 

 described ; but from a misinterpretation of the stilmiual cupule, he has referred the bulk of 

 IMhophila to Alternanthera, though they have no cupule-teeth alternating with the calyx, 

 and though one of his species is probably a mere synonym of that which he had described 

 as a Philoxerus. 



The lAthophilce grow among rocks on the seashore, and from their roots penetrating into 

 the fissures of the stone, and deriving from them a variable quantity of moisture and nourish- 

 ment, they are subject to variation in the size of the stem and the flowers, the ramification, and 

 the shape and length of the leaves ; thus the original description of L. muscoides, Sw., applies 

 only te a dwarfish, reduced form of a much larger plant, which'Swartz afterwaids seems not 

 to have recognized as identical, having named it otherwise in his herbarium. — A second 

 I species, peculiar to the Galapagean Archipelago, is equally variable ; this is the Alternanthera 

 Vtsubscaposa, \. Hook. 1, distinguished by a stiff stem, solitary, terminal flower-heads ; the 

 inner sepals equallmg in length the outer ones, which are uninerved by linear anthers, and 

 L a bipartite style, with longer, linear stigmas : to this perhaps may be reduced also A. radi- 

 r-^cata, "R. Hook.! {A. acaulis, Anders.!), in which a miiib exists really below the middle of 

 the outer sepals. • 



15. la. muscoides, Sw.! Perennial, decumbent, usually diff^use and creeping; leaves 

 oblanceolate or linear, glabrous j flower-heads ovoid-globose, or at length oblong, terminal 

 and axillary, the latter sessile ; bracts almost equalling the flower ; outer sepals exceeding 

 in length the inner ones, elliptical-oblong, blunt, with an excurrent midrib and a pair of 

 lateral ribs which line the scarious part and join the former in the middle ; anthers oblong, 

 style bifid: stigmas short, linear. — Sw. Ft. t. 1 : analyt. — ^The variability affects chiefly the 

 following particulars : stems and branches spitbameous, or only 1" long ; leaves 3"'-16"' 

 long ; flower-heads l"'-6"' long, terminal ones peduncled, or leafy at the base. 



a. longifolia. Leaves elongated, long-tapering towards the base; terminal flower-heads 

 usually pednncled. — Alternanthera caribsea, Moq. 



p. irevifolia. Leaves short, oblanceolate ; all flower-heads sessile. —Achyraothes liueari- 

 folia, Su>. ap. Wickstr. Iresine linearis, Moq. 



Hab. Navaza !, a desert island between Jamaica and Haiti, on maritime rocks, Sw.; JS., » 

 Barthelemi, S. Eustache !, Hb. Bks. ; Guadeloupe !]. (^l/>J>^iiUiK i(;ViJI«vit' i (C/X/nh-J 



