CONTKIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
279 
and the ‘ Genera Plantarura ’ should refuse to acknowledge 
Diploclisia, and why they have merged it, together with 
Nephroica and Holopeira, into Cocculus. In its habit there is 
nothing resembling a single species of either of those genera ; 
for the typical plant bears much the appearance of Chondoden- 
dron tomentosum of the ‘ Flora Peruviana,^ agreeing in its distant, 
nearly orbicular, large leaves, with crenately sinuated margins, 
supported upon very elongated slender petioles, the nerves as 
well as their branches terminating in the crenatures of the 
margin, and not anastomosing as in all the genera before 
mentioned. The inflorescence is racemose, long and slender, 
with short branches bearing from one to three pedicellated 
flowers ; the $ raceme is still more elongated, quite simple, with 
extremely lengthened pedicels; the sepals are ovate and prettily 
maculated ; the petals cuneately rhomboid, with the lateral 
angles inflexed ; the filaments are much thickened and incurved 
at the apex, in which is dorsally imbedded a 2-celled anther, 
which bursts bivalvately by a horizontal Assure : the $ flower 
has six sterile stamens, a glabrous ovary, with a short thick 
style, surmounted by a horizontally reflected, one-lipped, nar- 
rowly cup-shaped stigma with a very crenulated margin. The 
drupe is oblong, in one species being unusually large ; its puta- 
men, like that of Tiliacora and Chondodendron, is oblong, 
greatly compressed, of coriaceous texture, with a carinal peri- 
phery and a prominent, radiately striated, horseshoe-shaped 
ring upon the outer edge of each face, leaving a somewhat fal- 
cate very deep depression extending from the base to beyond 
the centre, with a prominent narrow rib down its middle; its 
condyle is internal, in the form of a linear septum connecting 
the two opposite hollows in the line of the projecting ribs ; thus 
it divides the cell nearly into two pouches, giving it the form of 
a horseshoe with its long legs almost parallel ; the seed is there- 
fore hippocrepiform, not cyclical as in the other genera before 
mentioned; the embryo, imbedded in fleshy albumen, partakes 
of the same form, has linear, strap-shaped, very long, flattened, 
incumbent cotyledons ; but the radicle is extremely short, some- 
what conical, a third or a fourth of their breadth, and is in one 
species only one-eighteenth, in another one-twelfth part of their 
incurved length. But it is not alone in these extremely dis- 
similar floral and seminal characters that this incompatibility 
exists : Diploclisia partakes of the rule which prevails through- 
out the Menispermacece — that where such differences exist, we 
may rely on finding a corresponding diversity in the habit of 
the plants of the genus. These combined circumstances fully 
justify a strong protest against the attempt to confound Diplo- 
clisia with Cocculus, Nephroica, and Holopeira. 
