Few plants have been more generally misunderstood than Stylidium; 
the older botanists asserting that the stigma existed at the base of the 
column. liabillardiere at first believed that it was at the top of the 
Golumn, but subsequently altered his opinion. Richard and Jussieu 
regarded the fifth lobe of the corolla or lip as the stigma; and nu¬ 
merous botanists followed the opinions of these eminent men. Thus 
the situation of the stigma, became a subject of warm discussion 
between physiologists who differed in opinion. It was left for the acu¬ 
men of a Brown to point out what all English botanists now recognise 
as true, that the stigma is situate at the top of the column in a cavity 
surrounded by the anthers. Here, although inconspicuous at first, it 
becomes more fully developed after the anthers have scattered their 
pollen. 
The genus Stylidium has been referred to by several vegetable 
physiologists as affording a prominent example of irritability. The 
column, which supports the anthers, as seen in the dessections, assumes 
a position outside of the corolla, by bending back between its lobes; 
on the slightest touch of a pin, near its base, it instantly leaps forward to 
the opposite side of the flower, where it will remain for a short time, 
and then gradually resume its former situation. What is effected by 
this peculiarity it is not easy to determine. Generally, the object of 
such irritability is the dispersion of the pollen, the more certainly to 
secure fertilization; and probably, in the present instance, this is the 
design of the all-wise Creator, notwithstanding the approximation of 
the parts of fructification. How frequently does the naturalist meet 
with a stumbling block in his researches ! This, and thousands of 
other instances, show us how little we know, and how infinite is divine 
wisdom. 
Derivation or the Names. 
Stylidium, from (ttvXlq a little column—the column of fructification being the 
part which here attracts notice from its remarkable irritability. 
Synonyme. 
Stylidium Drummondii. Grab, in Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 
for January, 1841. 
