126 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
also met with male plants of the same species, collected in dis- 
tant places in Abyssinia, which now enable me to complete both 
the generic and specific characters of Ileocarpus Schimperi. In 
all the fructiferous specimens the putamen exhibits an imper- 
forate condyle — a feature which maintains the validity of Ileo- 
carpus as distinct from Stephania, where the condyle is in- 
variably perforated. In Schimper’s specimens the leaves are 
much larger, somewhat less orbicular, and the inflorescence is 
longer; the leaves are 3 inches long, 2J inches broad, on a 
slender petiole 2-2j inches long, which is tortuous and some- 
what incrassated at its base, and inserted 8 lines within the 
truncated margin : the $ peduncle is 1|- inch long, its umbels 
6 lines, the fructiferous pedicels 2 lines long ; besides the brac- 
teoles at its apex, each peduncle is there furnished with a small 
peltate leaflet, 4 lines long, on a petiolule 3 lines long; the 
putamen is 3 lines long, 2| lines broad. In the other specimens 
the leaves are 2-2j inches long, lf-2J inches broad, on a petiole 
1-2 inches long, inserted 5-7 lines within the basal margin ; 
both in the and $ the peduncle is 6-10 lines long, the umbels 
4-5 lines long, the pedicels 1 line, and the sepals of equal length; 
in both sexes the latter are membranaceous and quite glabrous. 
24. Homocnemia. 
This genus, originally proposed by me in 1851, was founded 
upon a plant in Drege^s South-African collection, named by 
Dr. Meyer Cissampelos umbellata. The female flower only . is 
known, which dififers from Ileocardus and Stephania in having 
four sepals, four petals, and an ovary with an obsoletely bifld 
stigma. The authors of the ‘Flora Indica^ and the new ‘Genera 
Plantarum’ make this genus and Ileocarpus identical with Ste- 
phania ; but it differs from Stephania in the number of its floral 
parts, in the shape of its ovary and stigma, and in the peculiar 
involucral development of its extremely short umbels; it is, in- 
deed, nearer to Clypea, but sufflciently distinct from either, as 
the following diagnosis will show : — 
Homocnemia, nob. — Flores dioici. Masc. ignoti. — Foem. Sepala 
4, ovata, extus pilosa, per park opposita, sestivatione imbri- 
cata. Petala 4, sepalis 3-plo breviora, rotundata, carnosa. 
Stamina nulla. Ovarium solitarium, ovatum, breviter stipi- 
tatum, compressum, rectum, glabrum, sulco longitudinali 
latere notatum, 1-loculare, ovulo e pariete ventrali appenso ; 
stylus brevissimus, apice obtuso emarginatus, intus stigma- 
tosus. Csetera ignota. 
