2 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
order. A few years later (in 1831) Lessing described two new 
species from Sellow’s Brazilian collections, and also two others 
brought from Chile by Poppig : the characters of these last were 
afterwards given in fuller detail by Poppig himself in 1835 *. 
These descriptions added nothing to our previous knowledge 
of the structure of the order. DeCandolle, in the following 
year (1836), gave, in his ‘Prodromus,^ a monograph of the 
whole family, and in a very succinct manner gave the characters 
of the ten species (all then known), which he arranged under 
four genera. Some years ago, I proposed the genus Nastanthus, 
the type of which I found in the Cordillera of Chile in 1825, 
and of which 1 then made a drawing with structural details ; 
since then I have added ten other species to this genus. I also 
indicated the existence of another new genus, Anomocaiyus, 
which I had long before founded upon a plant of Cuming’s 
collection in Chile, to which I now add six other species. The 
genus Leucocera of Turczaninowf is inadmissible, as it rests 
only upon a species of Boopis previously described by Poppig 
and Lessing. In the same manner, the Acarpha of Dr. Grise- 
bach J must be referred to Boopis, and the Gymnocavlus § of Dr. 
Philippi to Calycera, upon grounds that will presently be shown. 
The CalyceracecR have many characters in common with the 
Composite. Their flowers, often intermixed with setaceous paleie, 
are aggregated upon a general receptacle, which is enclosed 
within an involucre of bracteiform leaflets more or less combined 
in one series : the ovary is constantly inferior ; the calyx, which 
is adnate to it, has a free, genei’ally 5 -toothed border ; the corolla 
is tubular, the lobes of its border being valvate in aestivation, 
and possessing the same peculiar system of nervation as the 
Composites ; their anthers, in like manner, are syngenesious ; 
their ovary is also inferior, l-celled, and 1-ovular j and the fruit 
is a dry aebsenium surmounted by the indurated and enlarged 
teeth of the calyx. They differ essentially, however, in the 
structure of the ovary, the ovule being suspended from the apex 
of the cell (not erect) ; in their achsenia being crowned by the 
calycine teeth, often elongated into rigid spines (not surmounted 
by a pappus) ; in their seeds containing a copious albumen, and 
a terete embryo, the radicle of which usually exceeds the coty- 
ledons in length, the radicle pointing to the apex of the cell 
(not to its base) ; their anthers, too, are deficient of the apical 
expansion of the connective, usually found in Composites.. They 
are all herbaceous plants, natives of South America, mostly 
growing in elevated and arid situations in the Andes of Chile ; 
* Nov. Gen. et Spec. i. p. 21, tab. 33 & 34. 
t Bot. Zeitung, xxxi. p. 712. 
+ Diagn. PI. Lechler, p. 38. § Linnaea, xxviii. p. 705. 
