NOTE ON VAVJ3A AND RHYTIDANDRA. 
333 
consequence in a question of affinity, since it occurs in so many plants of widely 
different families ; but it equally exists in many Meliacece. 
Nevertheless, the stronger tendency of Styrax and of the Humiriacece would appear 
to he in another direction, although the limits between the Styracece and the Meliacece 
cannot be determinately fixed, until the seeds of Pamphilia and Foveolaria are properly 
known. But it is singular that so acute a botanist as Mr. Miers, who proposes to 
separate Styrax widely from the Symplocinece ,* — allowing only a distant relationship 
phrase, with a slight and unimportant transposition, is repeated by Alph. De Candolle in his character of the 
genus. On the other hand, Mr. Miers, in his character of the family and his analysis of a Styrax , already 
referred to, states of the ovules, that they have the “ upper row erect, the middle horizontal, the lower 
pendulous.” In no species have I been able to verify the former statement ; that of Mr. Miers is borne out by 
S. officinale, S. grandifolium, and some other species. But this is not true of the whole genus. Zuccarini 
describes the ovules of S. Japonicum as all erect ; the plate represents them as all ascending (which is 
doubtless what was meant), as inspection shows them to be; and so I believe they are in & Americanum 
and some other American species. 
Mr. Miers also describes and figures the ovary of Styrax as “ trilocular only at the base, but unilocular at 
the summit,” and naturally refers to this character as confirming the relationship of Styracece with the Olacacece • 
I do not find it so in the species I possess, but rather with the dissepiments extending quite to the summit of 
the ovary, although early separating from the ovuliferous axis as the ovary enlarges ; that is, “ parietibus in- 
completis ab axi centrali demum distantibus,” as stated by M. Alph. De Candolle. 
A more anomalous character, attributed, by Mr. Miers alone, to the ovary (not only of Styrax , but of the 
order Styracece as he limits it), namely that of bearing “ a remarkable depressed epigynous gland upon its 
apex,” I am wholly unable to confirm. In Styrax tomentosum , and to some extent in S. camporum, the 
ovary may be observed of nearly the shape delineated in Mr. Miers’s sketch (1. c. fig. 4), that is, constricted 
below ; but what answers to the “ epigynous gland ” is only the ordinary epidermis of the ovary with its 
downy covering, unaffected by the pressure of the base of the corolla and the stamineal tube which 
closely encircles the lower part, and it readily separates from the rest of the parietes, as it also does in 
S. Benzoin. 
* Without pronouncing here upon the propriety of such separation, it may be remarked that the Styracece 
certainly appear to be closely connected with the Symplocinece through Pterostyrax and Halesia ; and that a 
diagnosis between the two groups, as limited by Mr. Miers, is not successfully based upon any one of his 
differential characters, enumerated in Lindley’s Vegetable Kingdom, p. 593, b. For, 1. A “tubular and 
entirely free calyx” belongs merely to a part of the genus Styrax, and not at all to Pterostyrax and Halesia. 
2. The same remark is true of “ the valvate aestivation of the petals.” 3. “ Their stamens being always 
uniserial” does not exclude Barberina, in one species of which, moreover, they are only thrice the number 
of the petals : in Halesia tetraptera the stamens are sometimes four times the number of the lobes of the 
corolla. 4. “ Linear anthers dorsally affixed to broad filaments nearly of their length,” are not attribu- 
table to Pterostyrax and Halesia , nor to some species of Styrax. 5. The same objection applies to a 
“ superior ovary with three incomplete dissepiments ” and “ a free central placentation,” which besides 
are not true of Pamphilia ; and the ovules are as numerous in certain Symploces as in some Styraces. 
