Narratives of travels and discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824 / by Major Denham, Captain Clapperton, and the late Doctor Oudney : extending across the great desert to the tenth degree of northern latitute, and from Kouka in Bornou, to Sackatoo, the capital of the Fellatah empire ; With an appendix.

  • Dixon Denham
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Narratives of travels and discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824 / by Major Denham, Captain Clapperton, and the late Doctor Oudney : extending across the great desert to the tenth degree of northern latitute, and from Kouka in Bornou, to Sackatoo, the capital of the Fellatah empire ; With an appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Bulbocodium and Merendera, however, which, following Mr. Ker*, I con- sider as belonging to Colchicum, appear to me decidedly to form subgenera or sections ; and in this opinion I am confirmed by having found a fourth section of the same genus. This fourth subgenus is established on Hypoxis fascicularis, a plant which has been seen by very few botanists, and which Linnaeus intro- duced into his Species Plantarum, and referred to Hypoxis, solely on the authority of the figure published in Dr. Russell’s History of Aleppo. In the Banksian Herbarium I have examined part of the original specimen of this species, found by Dr. Alexander Russell, and figured by Ehret in the work referred to, as well as more perfect specimens collected by Dr. Patrick Russell; and am satis- fied that its ovarium is not in any degree adherent to the tube of the perian- thium. I find, also, that Hypoxis fascicularis differs from Colchicum merely in having a simple unilocular ovarium with a single parietal placenta and an undivided style, instead of the compound trilocular ovarium with distinct or partially united styles, common to all the other sections of' that genus. A reduction, as in this case, to the solitary simple pistillum •]*, though existing in all Gramineae and in certain genera of several other families of Monocotyle- dones, is yet comparatively rare in that primary division of phaenogamous plants, and in the great class Liliaceae, the present species of Colchicum offers, I Obs.—Spathae 2—8—florae; limbi laciniae vel lanceolatae acutiusculae vel oblongae obtusae ; crista1 laciniarum omnium saepe fimbriato-ineisse, exteriorum nunc integerrimae. Ovula in singulis ovarii loculis biseriata, placentarum marginibus approximata; nec ut in C. autumnali quadriseriata. * Botan. Magaz. 1028. f The late celebrated M. Richard, in his excellent “Analyse du Fruit,” in pointing out the distinctions between a simple and compound pericarpium, produces that of Melanthacesc as an example of the compound, in opposition to that of Commelineae or of Junceae, which, though equally multilocular, he considers as simple. A knowledge of the structure of Colchicum Monocaryum would, no doubt, have confirmed him in his opinion respecting Mclanthaceae. It has always appeared to me surprising, that a carpologist so profound as M. Richard, and whose notions of the composition of true dissepiments, and even of the analogy in placentation between multilocular and unilocular pericarpia, were, in a great degree, equally correct and original, should never have arrived at the knowledge of the common type of the organ or simple pistillum, to which all fruits, whether unilocular or multilocular, were reducible; and that he should, in the instance now cited, have attempted to distinguish into simple and compound two modifications of the latter so manifestly analogous, and which differ from each other only in the degree of coalescence of their component parts.