Botany. 491 



amount of labor, the permanent value and complete acceptance of 

 which cannot be adjudicated off-hand. The plan of merging all 

 the forms into one genus, Vttis, has been abundantly tried, not 

 with very satisfactory results, — partly, it may be, because the 

 groups have not been well worked out. Professor Planchon, a 

 most experienced and keen botanist, who has especially investi- 

 gated the Vines for a good many years, has very naturally tried 

 the other tack, and has developed the Linnaean Vitis and Cissus 

 into ten genera. The principles upon which he has proceeded, as 

 explained in the preface, are wholly legitimate ; and one could 

 wish that they, have been successfully applied. This, only use 

 can determine. We may be confident, however, that if this mon- 

 ograph had been in the hands of the authors of the latest Genera 

 Plantarum, they would not have bodily adopted its conclusions, 

 although they would have been much helped by the elaborate 

 investigations, and might have seen their way to admit three or 

 four genera. They would not have trusted over-much to the 

 difference between polygamo-dioecious, polygamo-moncecious and 

 partly pseudo-hermaphrodite, hermaphrodite and probably some 

 pseudo-hermaphrodite, and hermaphrodite or rather physiologi- 

 cally polygamo-monoecious and with some blossoms pseudo-her- 

 maphrodite, — differences which must be shadowy, — nor to varia- 

 tions in the mere shape of style and stigma. And as to the disk, 

 which should be more tangible and hopeful, we gather from 

 Planchon's synopsis and from our own observations that there 

 are only three types. In the true Grape-vines, the disk is repre- 

 sented by nearly distinct and free nectariferous glands, alternate 

 with the stamens. In most other Ampelicleae, it is cupular or 

 annular (entire or crenate or lobed,) with base or lower half or 

 more adnate to the base of the ovary, but at least the margin or 

 lobes free. In the Virginia Creeper there is really no disk at all, 

 as was first noted by Dr. Torrey in his Flora of the Northern 

 States, in 1824, and insisted on in the Flora of North America, 

 in 1838, and again in the Genera Illustrata, where there are cor- 

 rect figures. Dr. Planchon expresses the same opinion in essence 

 but in different language, i. e., " Discus obsoletus ovarii basi plane 

 adnatus et tantum colore proprio subdistinctus." We could not 

 make much of the color ; but the tissue does thicken more or less } 

 and possibly may become obscurely nectariferous ; but the flowers 

 are not attractive to bees, as the allied species from Japan is. In 

 the latter while there is equally no hypogynous disk, there is 

 much thickening of nectariferous tissue over all the lower part of the 

 ovary more or less in longitudinal ridges, the whole 'plane adnatus' 

 throughout. Now we should make more of these three types 

 than Dr. Planchon does. For the first goes with the Calyptrately 

 Caducous corolla and polygamo-dioecious flowers of true Vttis. 

 The third with disk, if so called, wholly confluent with the ovary 

 itself, belongs to and includes all of the few known species (includ- 

 ing Planchon's Landukid) which have the striking biological 

 character of climbing by the dilatation and adhesion of the tendril 

 tips; and their flowers are 5-merous, essentially hemaphrodite, and 



