PLANTS N0VJ3 THURBERIAN^. 327 



former gamophyllous and merely four-lobed, and the cavity of the ovary four-sided ; 

 Tphile in Pilostyles the homogeneous and continuously imbricated (usually more nu- 

 merous) floral leaves are only to be arbitrarily divided into bracts, sepals, and petals, 

 and are apparently distinct from each other, although more or less adnate to the ovary, 

 except perhaps the outermost and lovpest, and the cell of the ovary is not angled. The 

 male flovpers of Apodanthes, too, are stil unknovs^n ; so they are, indeed, in all the spe- 

 cies of Pilostyles, except P. Berteri. Mr. Thurber's specimens furnish only female 

 flowers. These most resemble those of P. Blanchetii, R. Br. (Apodanthes Blanchetii, 

 Gardn.) ; but the sepals, &c. are not ciliate, nor are they adnate to more than the low^er 

 half of the surface of the ovary ; and the stigma is thicker, more dilated and disc- 

 shaped, and slightly umbonate in the middle. The floral envelopes appear to accord 

 very well with those of P. Calliandrce, E. Br. (Apodanthes CalUandrce, Gardn.) ; but in 

 that species the ovary is represented as almost wholly free, and its apex contracted into 

 an obtuse point terminated by a small truncate stigma. The broad and depressed stig- 

 ma of P. Thurberi rests directly upon the summit of the globose-ovoid ovary, without 

 the intervention of any style or contracted portion, and is wheel-shaped, or disc-shaped, 

 with a thickened (stigmatic) margin ; the upper surface is flat, with a slightly project- 

 ing umbo in the centre, which itself is obscurely perforated and cruciate, much as the 

 stigma is represented in Apodanthes Casearice by Poiteau. All the floral envelopes ap- 

 pear to persist on the fleshy but thin pericarp. The ovules and seeds, as in the tribe, 

 are attached to the whole parietes of the ovary, which they thickly and uninterrupt- 

 edly cover, fllling the cell ; they are orthotropous, and borne on slender funiculi of 

 their own length or longer. The seeds are oval, acutish at both ends, not very minute, 

 being about one eighth or one tenth of an English line in length ; the testa is thickish, 

 obscurely punctate or reticulated, and conformed to the minutely granular or cellular 

 nucleus, which, according to Mr. Brown, is a homogeneous embryo.* 



* A still more remarkable parasitic plant of the same region, recently brought to notice by Mr. Gray, the 

 surveyor of a southern Pacific Railroad route, is about to be published by Dr. Torrey, under the name of 

 Ammolroma SonorcB. It is a large and fleshy root-parasite, growing in the naked sands of the desert at the 

 head of the Gulf of California, where it furnishes the Papigo Indians with an important article of food. 

 The fresh plant is cooked by roasting, when it resembles the Sweet Potato in taste, or it is dried and mixed 

 with other and less palatable kinds of food. Dr. Torrey finds it to constitute a new genus, of the small 

 trroup or family represented by the little-known and anomalous Corallopliyllum of Kunth, and the Pholisma 

 of Nuttall ; in the floral structure and the scales more like the latter, from which it is distinguished by its 

 woolly-plumose calyx and its singular cyathiform inflorescence. 



