158 PHANEROGAMIA. 



terized by Webb, in his Spicilegia Gorgonea. That from the coast of 

 Peru has more downy leaves, obtuse, and obtusely toothed ; and well 

 accords with S. alba of Linnaeus, as described by Wight and Arnott. 



4. Sida rhombifolia, Linn. 

 Var. a. carpellis apice aristatis, vel subulato-rostratis. 

 Var. j3. carpellis apice mucronulatis vel omnino muticis. 



S. rhomboidea, Roxb. Hort. Bengh. p. 50; DC. Prodr. 1, p. 462; Wight & Am. 



Prodr. Ind. Or. p. 58 ; Decaisne, Herb. Timor, p. 105. 

 S. Eondensis, H. B. K. Nov. Gen. & Spec. 5, p. 260 ; DC. 1. c. 

 S. salicifolia, Forst. in herb. Mus. Par. ex Guilleniin. 



Hab. Samoan and Feejee Islands ; common : the var. a. with dis- 

 tinctly owned carpels. — Samoan Islands, Tahiti, Luzon, Singapore, Rio 

 Janeiro, and Callao, Peru; the var. /?. with pointless or barely mucro- 

 nate carpels. 



This widely diffused species varies much in the shape and size of the 

 leaves, as well as in the smoothness or the degree of tomentose pubes- 

 cence of their lower surface ; and the carpels are either long-awned, 

 awn-pointed, mucronate-beaked, or entirely blunt, without apparently 

 any means of drawing a line of distinction between the different forms, 

 as Mr. Bentham remarks. S. canescens and S. alba, Cav., S. Cana- 

 riensis, Willd., belong to the species ; and perhaps even & retusa and 

 S. Philippica, make an extreme form of it. 



5. Sida retusa, Linn. 



Var. vix suffruticosa; foliis ovalibus vel obovato-oblongis parvis ; pedun- 

 culis folio longioribus. 



Sida microphylla, Benth. in Hook. Lond. Jour. Bot. 2, p. 211, non Cav. ? 



Hab. Samoan and Feejee Islands, in waste places. 



A small, depressed or procumbent species, with the stems scarcely 



