OF PLANTS CALLED COMPOSITE. 281
ten or four flowers in the involucrum than with nine, six, or three. But greater permanence being, as has been already remarked, generally connected with greater per- fection, it becomes also probable that, if any species of this genus should be discovered with androgynous capitula, the female flower will occupy the centre as in the genus of Euphorbiaceae above referred to.
It is worthy of remark, and may indeed appear in some degree at variance with the foregoing observations, that [ioi although in an assemblage of flowers priority of expansion generally indicates a greater degree of perfection, and con- sequently a more ready convertibility of the hermaphrodite into the female flower ; yet in a hermaphrodite flower the development of stamina usually precedes that of pistilla. The most remarkable exceptions to this order of develop- ment which I at present remember, occur in several species of Plantago, where the stigmata are fully deve- loped, and often even withered, before the bursting of the antherse.
��I now proceed to make some remarks on certain genera of Compositse which either occur under different names in late systematic works, or whose structure and limits seem to be imperfectly understood.
Soliva
was established in the Prodromus Florae Peruvianas et Chi- lensis, and is adopted by Persoon in his Synopsis Plan- tarum.
To this genus Hippia minuta of the Linnean Herba- rium unquestionably belongs, and it is perhaps not speci- fically distinct from Soliva pedicellata. But on comparing the structure of this plant with the figures and descrip- tions, given by Mons. de Jussieu (in the fourth volume of the Annales du Museum,) of the different species of his Gymnostyles, it appears to me evident that the whole of
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