68 
A NEW GENUS OF CRASSULACEAE 
I have taken the liberty of associating the discoverer of this most 
interesting and charming little plant, Miss Mary M. Page, with the 
generic name I have given to it. I owe the privilege of examining 
and describing it to the kindness of Mrs F. Bolus who has done so 
much already for the study of the South African Flora. When I first 
glanced at it, I thought Mrs Bolus had sent me a liverwort, but of 
course an examination of it showed at once that it was a crassulaceous 
plant not essentially different in floral structure from the species of 
Crassula with tetramerous flowers except by the decidedly syncarpous 
ovary. In many species of Crassula and other genera of Crassulaceae, 
the carpels are slightly united at the base. In Diamorpha, Penthorum 
and Triactina one finds even ovaries that can be considered syncarpous 
in the accepted sense of the term, but in none of them has syncarpy 
proceeded so far as in Pagella which cannot be placed into any of these 
genera. It is the only known crassulaceous plant in which a haplo- 
stemonous androeceum is associated with syncarpy, and it is moreover 
the only crassulaceous plant with syncarpous ovary known from the 
Southern Hemisphere. In adding an English description of the plant 
I will take the opportunity of making a few remarks here and there 
which are not included in the Latin diagnosis. 
The roots are fibrous and there can be no doubt that the plant is 
an annual. The stem is succulent. Until the plant is about 7 mm. in 
diameter the stem is obconical, then it flattens out and in the older 
specimens the obconical shape has practically disappeared and the 
stem is disc-shaped. The older leaves have by that time withered and 
the disc bears on its top a large number of closely packed sessile flowers 
surrounded by 2-3 quasi-rows of also very closely packed foliage leaves, 
the whole resembling very closely a flat capitulum of some Compositae, 
except that in Pagella the inflorescence is evidently cymose, though, 
owing to the crowded state of the flowers, no further analysis of their 
relative position was possible. The largest plant I have seen was 1-8 by 
2-1 cm. in diameter and about 3 mm. thick. Its surface area was, 
therefore, only a little over 3 sq. cm. and yet it bore over 60 flower-buds 
and flowers. The floral bracts are frequently suppressed. The foliage- 
leaves are about 3 mm. long. They have a thin, flat, smooth, cuneate 
basal portion (about l\ mm. long) and an enlarged thickened deep 
green apical portion which is obliquely truncate and papillose at the 
top. The flowers are 1| — 2 mm. in diameter, tetramerous, haplostemon- 
ous, distinctly proterandrous. The sepals are slightly connate at the 
base, about half the length of the petals, somewhat similar to the 
foliage-leaves but much smaller, the truncate apical portion triangular. 
The petals are broadly obovate-cuneate, slightly contracted and a 
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