Page:Appendix to the first twenty-three volumes of Edwards's Botanical Register.djvu/51

 Rh to be ornamental; that one, however, 193 is a noble plant, with spherical heads of pink flowers six inches in circumference, and a compact handsome foliage.

Finally, there is an exogenous plant to which I must particularly allude, in consequence of its very singular structure. This, which seems to be herbaceous, has a round purple stem, clothed near the base with linear striated alternate leaves, and dividing at the top, which is nearly leafless, into a corymbose compact panicle of bright yellow flowers. The calyx is superior and four-toothed; there are four petals with an imbricate aestivation; within these are eight stamens with linear bi-locular anthers; there is no trace of disk; the ovary is one-celled, and has four membranous wings opposite the petals; there are four short erect styles, each with a discoloured rounded stigma, and the ovules are one or two, anatropous, hanging by short funiculi from the apex of the cavity, one on each side of a slender cord which passes from the apex to the base of the cell. Some of these characters are so much those of Combretaceæ, that the genus might appear referable to that order, if its habit were not opposed to such an approximation, which its four styles render still more objectionable, notwithstanding the correspondence of its winged fruit with that of Pentaptera. It may also be compared with the genus Quinchamalium, usually referred to Santalaceæ, with which its unilocular ovary and general habit very much agree, especially if we suppose that in the plant under consideration the cord that separates the two pendulous ovules answers to that which bears the ovules at its own apex in Quinchamalium; the four distinct styles however, and the absence of a disk, are materially at variance with that genus, although not with some other plants of the same order. It is however among those degenerate forms of Onagraceæ, known by the name of Halorageæ, that the most immediate afiinity of the plant is probably to be sought, and especially with Cercodea, by some authors referred to Haloragis; with that genus it corresponds in having a winged

 (193) spectabilis; foliis oppositis lineari-oblongis acutis sessilibus glaucis ramisque glaberrimis, capitulis sphæricis sessilibus multifloris, calycis limbo sericeo: tubo villosissimo, involucri foliolis ovatis acuminatis coloratis.