_ 
A genus proposed some years ago by ourselves in Curtis’s 
Magazine (1063) under the present name, and afterwards 
(as a comparison of dates will show) by M. Richard by that 
of Fiuccra, changed by M. Desvaux, at a still later period, 
into Stareria. Neither of these botanists appears, however, 
to have been aware that the present species should have 
been included in his genus; but has relied upon japonicus 
alone for the character. . 
The synonym from the “ Flora Cochinchinensis” was 
kindly communicated by Mr. Brown, who has ascertained 
it from the original sample in the Herbarium of the Museum 
of Natural History at Paris; where a portion of Lourciro’s 
Botanical Collection had found its way from Lisbon during 
the pillage of the late wars. The same attentive observer 
has likewise been enabled to trace the true nature of the 
fruit in native samples. 
In O. japonicus the fruit has been described as a blue 
berry of an ovoid subglobular form, 3-celled, with few 
or sometimes solitary seeds, and particularized by Richard 
as having a tabulated remnant at the top. In spicatus, the 
one before us, Mr. Brown has found the fruit to be of the 
kind he has ascribed to Petiosanrues Teta, in the twelfth 
volume of the Linnzan Transactions. “ In this monoco- 
«< tyledonous plant,” we quote his text, “the germen ¢o- 
«‘ heres with the tube of the perianthium or corolla, and 
“has originally 3 cells, each containing 2 ovula. Soon 
< after the pollen has been shed, from one to three of these 
“< oyula rapidly increase in size, by their pressure ‘prevent 
“ the development of the others, and rupture the germen, 
« which remains but little enlarged at the base of the fruit, 
“ consisting of from one to three. berrylike seeds.” Now, as 
it is impossible to separate the two species generically, the 
general coincidence, both in character and habit, being ob- 
viously paramount to any particular difference in the fruit, 
we must cither conclude that there is some mistake in the 
description of that of japonicus and that a berried seed 
has been taken for a berried capsule, or else that the differ- 
ence between these two kinds of fruit is of little influence in 
regard to the modification of the rest of the plant, and pos- 
sibly not even constant, 
Native of Nepal, Cochinchina, China, and Japan. In- 
troduced last year by the Horticultural Society. Flowered 
in their conservatory at Hammersmith in October. The 
fruit, in the native samples we have seen, appears (when 
dry at least) of a dark violet blue. 
See ee a ee aa 
