632 PHANEROGAM I A. 



Hab. Fuegia ; on mountains at Orange Harbour : somewhat rare. 



A small and slender plant; the sterile stems creeping and rooting, 

 glabrous, squamose ; the flowering ones shorter and thicker root- 

 stocks; dioecious: the female plant apparently smaller than the 

 males. Petioles 3 to 15 lines long, strigosely hirsute with erect 

 reddish hairs. Leaves orbicular or round-reniform, 3 to 9 lines in 

 diameter, 5-7-lobed, or on sterile shoots crenately 9-13-lobed, sub- 

 coriaceous, glabrous, sometimes ciliate, the lobes roundish, entire. 

 Stipular scales ferrugineous. Spikes simple, few-flowered ; the male 

 raised on a slender scape of 6 to 18 lines in length; the female short 

 and subsessile. Male flowers 8 to 12, crowded, or at length sparse, 

 obscurely pedicellate or nearly sessile on the rhachis, not bracteate. 

 Calyx of 2 filiform-linear glabrous sepals, placed anterior and poste- 

 rior, much smaller than the naked anthers, which they at no period 

 enclose, glandular at the tip. Petals none. Stamens 2, alternate 

 with the sepals: anthers broadly oval, somewhat didymous, two- 

 celled, nearly a line long, twice the length of their filaments, turgid, 

 mucronulate, opening longitudinally along the margins. Female 

 flowers 8 or 10, capitate, ebracteate, sessile. Tube of the calyx sub- 

 globose, adnate to the ovary; the lobes 2, short and obtuse, oval, 

 often unequal, sometimes lateral as respects the axis of inflorescence, 

 persistent. Petals wanting. Stigmas 2, subulate, elongated, 2 or 3 

 lines in length, purple, hispid, alternate with the lobes of the calyx, 

 slightly united at the base. Ovary one-celled. Ovule anatropous, 

 suspended. Fruit not seen. (The fruit excepted, our specimens 

 enable me to complete the characters of this rare species of an inte- 

 resting genus.) 



Plate 79, B.— Gunnera lobata : male and female plants, and a 

 sterile shoot, of the natural size. Fig. 1. Portion of the male inflo- 

 rescence, magnified. 2. Female inflorescence, magnified. 3. Flower, 

 from the same, more magnified ; the ovary divided transversely. 4. 

 Flower, with the ovary vertically divided. 



