

CARYOPHYLLACEiE. 135 



Filaments capillary, elongated and exserted, but of variable length, 

 persistent. Anthers oblong, two-celled. Ovary obovoid, one-celled, 

 many-ovuled. Styles 3, or sometimes 4, capillary, stigmatose down 

 the inner side. Ovules campylotropous, inserted on a central colu- 

 mella. Capsule ovoid, three-valved to the base, rarely four-valved, 

 a little longer than the calyx ; the valves chartaceous, at length two- 

 toothed at the apex. Seeds several, minute, roundish, slightly com- 

 pressed, with a crustaceous and acutely tuberculate or rnuricate testa. 

 Embryo coiled into an almost complete ring, around the sparing fari- 

 naceous albumen. 



Although our specimens have not been compared with those of Cha- 

 misso, yet the habitat, the detailed description, and a tracing which I 

 possess of the figure above-cited in the rare Atakta Botanica, leave no 

 doubt of their identity. The inflorescence has justly been compared 

 with that of Silene Otites, although the flowers are much smaller. 

 The leaves, also, are not unlike those of that plant, although more 

 crowded on the woody stem. The original authors describe them as 

 tripiinerved, but with the lateral veins immersed and obsolete. Fenzl 

 more correctly calls them one-nerved ; and in our specimens there is 

 scarcely a trace of lateral nerves. — To this species belongs the " Por- 

 tulacaceous" plant described, without a name, in the Botany of 

 Beechey's Voyage, p. 188, which was received in a package of plants 

 from China, and therefore was supposed to have been collected in 

 that country ; but it doubtless came from Oahu. — The plant of Men- 

 zies' collection, which Hooker mentions, in Icones Plantarum, 1. c, 

 under the name of S. ligiistrina, is a wholly different species, with a 

 deliquescent panicle and with conspicuously three-nerved leaves, like 

 those of & Menziesii. (Vide p. 133.) 



2. SCHIEDEA SPERGULINA, Sp. Nov. (Tab. 11,) 



S. panicula thyrsoidea contractu e cymulis brevibus puberulis ; foliis 

 angustissimis filiformibus uninerviis fasciculatis ; sepalis obtusis; 

 seminibus fere kevibus. 



Hab. On the Mountains of Kauai, one of the Sandwich Islands. 



Stem shrubby, erect, apparently one or two feet high, terete, nodose, 





