468 
Notes. 
The ovule of Orthopterygium is very imperfectly known, but the attachment 
appears to be lateral and the funicular appendage cup-shaped at the basal end, 
bilamellate upwards, and more or less enclosing the embryoniferous lobe. 
Mr. Boodle, who has fully examined the ovule of Juliania from microtome sections, 
describes it as hemianatropous with a single integument. 
The compound fruits of Juliania are samaroid in form, the wing being the 
flattened pedicel, at the base of which it disarticulates from the undifferentiated part 
of the pedicel. They vary from 4 to 7 cm. in length by i-J to 2\ cm. in width. 
Externally they strongly resemble the samaroid pods of certain genera of Leguminosae, 
notably those of Platypodium and Myroxylon. The involucre itself, of the largest 
fruits seen, is only about 1 cm. deep by 2 cm. wide. It is composed of very hard 
tissues and is quite indehiscent. Only quite young fruit of Orthopterygium is known. 
In this the flattened pedicel is narrow, straight and aequilateral, from 6 to 7 cm. long 
and about 1 cm. wide. 
The nuts of Juliania are almost orbicular, biconvex, hairy on the outside and 
have a very hard endocarp. The solitary exalbuminous seed is circular or oblong, 6 
to 10 mm. long, compressed, with a smooth, thin testa. The embryo is horizontal, 
with thin plano-convex, more or less oblique, obscurely lobed cotyledons, which are 
epigaeous in germination, and a long ascending radicle applied to the edges of the 
cotyledons. 
II. History. It is surprising that a genus of plants so striking in aspect, so dis- 
tinct in the shape of its fruit, and so widely spread as Juliania is in Mexico, should 
have entirely escaped the observation of all the earlier European travellers in that 
country. 
C. J. W. Schiede, M.D., who accompanied Ferdinand Deppe on a botanical 
expedition to Mexico in 1828, was apparently the first to send dried specimens to 
Europe of one of the species of Juliania. But it was not until 1843 that his friend, 
Dr. D. F. L. von Schlechtendal, published an account of the genus of plants in 
question. 
Under the name of Hypopterygium (subsequently Juliania) adstrmgens, he very 
fully described the material he had an opportunity of examining, but he had neither 
female flowers nor mature seeds, and he was doubtful whether the fruit was the result 
of one or more flowers. His description is very accurate, and he expresses his 
views of the affinities of the plant, which he regarded as a type of a new Natural 
Order. Since SchlechtendaPs time, until I took up the study of the genus five years 
ago, nobody seems to have had sufficient material to supplement his description. 
In 1854, A. Gray described, also from very incomplete material, what he con- 
sidered a second species of the same genus, collected in Peru. An examination of 
fuller, though by no means complete, material has led me to separate it generically 
under the name of Orthopterygium . 
In September, 1900, the late Mr. Marc Micheli presented Kew with a small set 
of E. Langlassd’s Mexican plants. Among them was a specimen in fruit, which, 
after much research, was identified with SchlechtendaPs Juliania adstringens ; but the 
most careful and tedious examination carried me no further than Schlechtendal had 
reached sixty years before. Previous to this (in 1899, as I afterwards found out), Kew 
