CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
251 
Division 1. EucoUetiese. Flores apetali; fructus capsularis, 
dehiscens. 
1. COLLETIA. 
A very good history of this genus is given by Sir W. Hooker 
in his ‘ Botanical Miscellany’ (i. p. 150), but some confusion has 
existed among its species, which I have endeavoured to clear 
away. The species are mostly confined within the extratropical 
regions of South America, on both coasts ; some few have been 
found within the tropics, one of them by Humboldt, at Huanca- 
bamba, in Upper Peru, at an elevation of more than 10,300 feet 
above the sea. The greater portion are met with near the base 
of the Andes, both on the western and eastern sides, at an eleva- 
tion of from 2500 to 6000 feet, while others are seen only on 
the maritime sandhills along the coasts of Chile and in the 
low grounds bordering the river Plate. Commerson’s plant, 
said by Jussieu to be from Brazil, is from the province of 
Buenos Ayres : one species is a native of the island of Juan 
Fernandez, in the Pacific. Colletia is readily distinguished 
from most others of the tribe by the absence of petals, — a 
character partaken of only by another, which 1 have proposed 
under the name of Notophoma, from which it is at once recog- 
nized by the peculiar form of its disk. In many genera of the 
tribe, the tube of the calyx is circumscissile in the line of its 
contraction above the basilar intumescence ; Colletia differs from 
them in having its circumscissile zone midway between that line 
and the base, so that when the tube falls away, it carries with it 
its annular disk, aud when seen from below, it seems closed by 
a diaphragm, pervious only for the passage of the style. When 
the fruit is half immersed in the persistent cupular base of the 
calyx, its epicarp forms a loose skin, which breaks round the 
margin of the cup, leaving its lower moiety persistent within it, 
while the upper moiety splits at the same time, to allow the 
separation of the three cocci (consisting of endocarp), which 
spring out of the calycine cup with elastic force, each coccus 
bursting by its axial line, as in Euphorbiacece, &c. ; the remain- 
ing portion of the epicarp attached to the cocci comes off like a 
loose skin ; but the mesocarp, which is membranaceous, adheres 
to the corneous endocarp. 
Colletia, Comm. — Char, emend. Calyx cylindricus vel urceo- 
lato-tubulosus, imo tumescens et hinc demum circumscissus, 
8-10-striatus, limbo 4-5-fido, laciniis acutis reflexis, intus 
Carina prominula calloque apicali notatis, sestivatione valvatis. 
Petala nulla. Stamina 4 v. 5, inter lacinias calycis, rarius 
sub faucem, inserta; filamenta subulata, eompressa, laciniis 
2k2 
