1906.] 



a New Natural Order of Plants. 



233 



II. — History. 



It is surprising that a genus of plants so striking in aspect, so distinct in 

 the shape of its fruit, and so widely spread as Juliania is in Mexico, should 

 have entirely escaped the observation of all the earlier European travellers 

 in that country. 



C. J. W. Schiede, M.D., who accompanied Ferdinand Deppe on a botanical 

 expedition to Mexico in 1828, was apparently the first to send dried 

 specimens to Europe of one of the species of Juliania. But it was not 

 until 1843 that his friend, Dr. D. F. L. von Schlechtendal, published an 

 account of the genus of plants in question. 



Under the name of Hypopterygium (subsequently Juliania) adstringens, he 

 very fully described the material he had an opportunity of examining, but he 

 had neither female flowers nor mature seeds, and he was doubtful whether 

 the fruit was the result of one or more flowers. His description is very 

 accurate, and he expresses his views of the affinities of the plant, which he 

 regarded as the type of a new Natural Order. Since Schlechtendal's time, 

 until I took up the study of the genus five years ago, nobody seems to have 

 had sufficient material to supplement his description. 



In 1854, A. Gray described, also from very incomplete material, what he 

 considered a second species of the same genus, collected in Peru. An 

 examination of fuller, though by no means complete, material has led me to 

 separate it generically under the name of Orthopterygium. 



In September, 1900, the late Mr. Marc Micheli presented Kew with 

 a small set of E. Langlasse's Mexican plants. Among them was a specimen 

 in fruit, which, after much research, was identified with Schlechtendal's 

 Juliania adstringens ; but the most careful and tedious examination carried 

 me no further than Schlechtendal had reached 60 years before. Previous to 

 this (in 1899, as I afterwards found out), Kew received a specimen of 

 a male plant collected in the Mexican State of Jalisco by Mr. C. G. Pringle. 

 n. 6871, and doubtingly named Juliania adstringens. 



The male specimen was published as Juliania mollis, HemsL, and the 

 fruiting as adstringens, Schl. 



This publication had the desired effect, for it brought me a letter at the 

 end of 1901 from Dr. J. 1ST. Eose, Curator in the " Division of Plants" of the 

 United States National Museum at Washington, from which I make the 

 following extracts : — 



" You will also be interested in what I have to tell you about Juliania. 

 For more than six years I have been at work off and on, at this genus, but 

 for the lack of material I have never published anything upon it, but each 



VOL. LXXVIII. — B. T 



