572 PLANT/E JAVANICiE RARIORES.
that the stamen belongs to the inner or complementary series, which is rarely developed in triandrons genera. One remarkable apparent exception to the usual order of development of stamina occurs indeed in a genns of grasses found in Abyssinia by Dr. Riippell, to whom I am indebted for the specimens I have examined. In this genus the locusta contains apparently a single flower, of which the gluma consists of two minute obtuse nerveless valves ; the perianthium is formed of two valves nearly equal in size, form, texture, and nerves, which are three in number, the middle nerve of each valve ending in a seta ; the stamina are three in number, but instead of being inserted as I have described those of triandrous grasses generally to be, they are placed within the upper or inner valve, the middle stamen being opposite to the median nerve ; the embryo also is placed on the side of the inner valve : hypogynous squamulae are entirely wanting. If the flower here described be really simple, it would present a still more formidable objection than Ataxia to the composition of the inner valve of the perianthium. But the arrange- ment of stamina, and direction of scutelluin or embryo, suggest another hypothesis with respect to the Abyssinian genus; namely, that the flower is not simple, but made 9] up of two flowers reduced to their outer valves. This latter view I am disposed to adopt, not only on consider- ing the usual order of suppression of the parts of the floral envelope in grasses ; but from the same degree of reduction actually existing in several Panicece, to which primary division of Graminece the Abyssinian genus would according to this view belong. It may be added that the genus referred to very remarkably agrees, both in habit and structure, with an unpublished genus discovered by Ehrenberg, likewise in Abyssinia (Podojjogon, Ehrenb. MSS.), and which unquestionably belongs to this primary division of the order.
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