150 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
[lermanent characters corresponding with the two species above- 
mentioned, and certainly all the specimens I have seen are 
referable to one species. From the marked manner in which 
some of the leaflets in L. bitemata are lobed, it is not unreasonable 
to suppose that the leaflets may sometimes become further sub- 
divided ; but that must be considered as a very exceptional fea- 
ture. The specimens grown in this country, from which Sir 
Wm. Hooker made his drawing in Bot. Mag. tab. 4500, bear a 
rather different aspect, with the leaves somewhat modified in 
form and texture, from those of native specimens ; but that pro- 
bably is the result of garden cultivation. The plant there 
described was brought from Concepcion, where it is stated to 
grow abundantly, and is no doubt identical with the speeimens 
in our herbaria collected in the same neighbourhood. 
The small leaflets at the base of the petiole have always been 
considered as bracts, but they appear to me to partake more of 
the character of stipulary leaves, for the following reasons : — 
The peduncle, both of the male and female inflorescence, springs 
out of the middle of a bud-like verticil of small, erect, squama- 
ceous, haii'y bracts, similar in size and shape to those found at 
the base of the pedicels ; this cluster of bracts grows out of the 
middle of a conspicuous gland-like prominenee, seated on the 
stem, a little above the petiole ; and it is from the margin of 
this prominence that these leaflets emanate : this difference in 
the place of their origin shows that they should be considered 
as stipules rather than bracts. They occur both in the floriferous 
and barren axils, and therefore appear to have nothing to do 
with the inflorescence ; the real bracts are always hairy, while 
these leaflets are smooth and veined, with a texture exactly re- 
sembling that of the leaves. I have oceasionally seen a verticil 
of three of these leaflets at the base of a petiole. 
During my residence at Concon, about twenty miles from 
Valparaiso, now thirty-five years ago, I found growing in its 
neighbourhood a species of Lardizabala in flower and in fruit, 
specimens of which I still possess. Concluding it to be a plant 
well known and described, I did not then bestow any particular 
attention upon it; and it was only by comparison with other 
specimens in different herbaria, after my return to England 
above twenty years afterwards, that I found it to differ essen- 
tially from L. biternata. I do not remember to have seen the 
male flower, at least I have no fragment or note of it : the 
flowers in my specimen are female, with sterile stamens, and 
they appear to me larger than in the other species. In the 
ordinary species the leaves, as before stated, are always biter- 
nate, or ternarily divided into nine leaflets, the lateral ones 
being inequilateral and sessile, generally very glabrous and 
