204 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
sinus. Numerous fasciculated ^ panicles, shorter than the 
petiole, are crowded in the principal axils, each with a short 
peduncle and many elongated, divaricated, approximated, and 
alternate branches, which are severally again divided, often 
forming an entangled mass of flowers ; the length of these pan- 
icles is 1^ inch, their ramifications generally inch long : the 
$ raceme is 3-4 inches long, having sometimes one or two some- 
what remote basal leaves | inch in diameter; but the approxi- 
mated floral bracts, with a long mucronated point, are 2 lines in 
diameter. 
28. Clypea. 
This genus was established by Blume, in 1825, upon six species 
from Java ; but only one of these is congeneric with his type, the 
rest belonging to Loureiro’s genus Stephania, with which he does 
not seem then to have been acquainted. Wight and Arnott, in 
their ‘ Prodromus,’ placed all the species of Stephania in Clypea, 
while, contrariwise, the authors of the ‘Flora Indica^ merged 
the latter genus into Stephania, on the ground that the number 
of its floral parts is inconstant. In this opinion they were sup- 
ported by Prof. Asa Gray, who stated that he found in C. Fors- 
teri trimerous as well as tetramerous flowers on the same plant. 
1 have since examined the ^ flowers of the same species, which 
were kindly sent to me by Dr. Asa Gray, and found most of 
them regularly tetramerous, while the others were more or less 
irregularly afi’ected by metamorphic influence; but in no one 
instance was I able to detect the decidedly trimerous structure 
of Stephania^. I obtained similar results from the typical 'spe- 
cimens, now in the British Museum, collected by Forster and 
Solander. Additional evidence of the tetramerous or dimerous 
* In one head of twelve <? flowers, it appeared to me that there were six 
which had each eight sepals, four petals, and one stamen, one with nine 
sepals and five petals, one with seven sepals and four petals, one with six 
sepals and four petals, one with seven sepals and three petals, and one 
double flower with fourteen sepals, eight petals, and two stamens, one of 
which was much dwarfed : hence there existed, in all, twelve stamens, 
forty-eight petals, and ninety-one sepals, averaging for each flower the 
number of more than seven and a half sepals, four petals, and one stamen. 
If account had been taken of the rudimentary parts, dwarfed to a size so 
minute as to escape ordinary observation, the full normal proportion of 
floral parts would be complete. In this species the sessile flowers are so 
closely compacted upon the fleshy disk, that it is almost impracticable to 
separate them without confounding some parts of one with those of an- 
other; the only sure mode of analysis is therefore to count the whole 
number of parts in one capitulum, and take their average. In other spe- 
cies (for instance, in C. oxypkylta), where the flowers are approximated, 
not agglutinated together, and therefore easily separable, the floral parts 
are constantly and unque.stionably tetramerous. 
