160 Notes on Indian Botany, 



removed to form types of distinct genera. The one under 

 consideration seems to merit this distinction, a point on 

 which, however, I speak with less certainty as my acquain- 

 tance with the genus is limited to two or three species, all 

 differing widely from this, both in habit and structure, which 

 encourages me to constitute it the type of a new genus. 



Decandolle associates with this plant, in his section Po- 

 ly cephalos, Sp. Swaveolens, S. Indicus, Lamark, a species 

 figured by Lamark and Gaertner, and of which I have speci- 

 mens, but which, so far as I can judge from this data, seems 

 much more nearly allied to S. hirta, a common Indian plant, 

 placed in a different section. This on the other hand is most 

 distinct, differing widely from both in habit, and in floral 

 structure. In habit it differs in the form, decurrence, and 

 clothing of the leaves, and in the glomeruls being quite 

 sessile; while in the others it is peduncled. In these the 

 capitula are surrounded by several series of bractial scales all 

 about the same size, and have two or more male flowers, with 

 numerous female ones springing directly from the rachis : 

 in this I find invariably, one of the bracts much larger than 

 the rest, dilated at the base (forming a general involucrum) 

 and terminating in an elongated subulate point or mucro, cor- 

 responding with a sessile, solitary, large, hermaphrodite cen- 

 tral flower, and three or four smaller, broad truncated, folded 

 ones, corresponding with as many slender, pedicelled, female 

 flowers, the pedicels adhering nearly their whole length to 

 the base of the bracts. The corolla of the hermaphrodite 

 flower is cylindrical, 5-toothed, thick and friable, apparently 

 composed of a congeries of square cells (similar in form to 

 those composing the sheath of a plantain leaf) with the fila- 

 ments attached to the base ; anthers oblong, the ovule perfect, 

 maturing into a 4-sided glabrous seed, about twice the size 

 of those of the female flowers ; seed of the female flowers 

 oblong, terete, hairy. 



Differences such as these, mark this as a very distinct spe- 

 cies, if not a good genus, and which, not being noticed by 



