Page:Miscellaneousbot02brow.djvu/300

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284 OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURAL FAMTLT

io4] by Dombey, and which exactly agrees with Sobreya of the Flora Peruviana, it appears evident that this genus is redu- cible to Meyera. Enhydra of Loureiro's Flora Cochinchi- nensis, though described somewhat differently, and referred to Polygamia segregata, I have little doubt, belongs to the same genus; as does unquestionably Hinystha of Rox- burgh's unpublished Flora Indica, where it is also referred to Polygamia segregata. This plant, which I have exa- mined, is scarcely distinct from a species of Meyera that grows in New South Wales.

Cryphiospermum of Mons. de Beauvois's interesting Flore d'Oware et Benin, although reduced by him to Cichoraceae, I have but little hesitation in referring also to Meyera. And lastly, Ccesidia radicans of Willdenow, likewise a native of aequinoctial Africa, is perhaps not specifically dif- ferent from Cryphiospermum repens of Mons. de Beauvois.

Melampodium

was established by Linnaeus, in the first edition of Genera Plantarum and in Hortus Cliffbrtianus, from a specimen found by Houston near Vera Cruz, and communicated by Miller to Clifford, in whose Herbarium, now forming part of the collection of Sir Joseph Banks, it still exists. It does not appear that this plant has been found by any other botanist than Houston; and according to the cha- racter given by Linnaeus of Melampodium, it must be con- sidered the only species of the genus.

In the second edition of Species Plantarum he added to it, but with a doubt, Melampodium ausfrale, a plant adopted from Lcefling, according to whose description the pappus and surface of the seed are widely different from those of the original species. Swartz has referred to the genus a third species, M. kumile, entirely distinct in these respects from both the former ; and more recently a fourth species, M. lonyifolium, with seeds differently modified from all the others, has been annexed to it. io5] But if these four plants, so extremely different from each other in pappus and form of the pericarpium, really

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