[119]Botan. Magaz. 1028.
[120]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 Melanthaceæ as an example of the compound, in opposition to that of Commelineæ or of Junceæ, 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 Melanthaceæ.
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.
[121]Flinders’s Voy. to Terra Austr. 2. p. 582.
[122]Syst. Veg. 1. p. 132.
[123]Annal. des Scien. Nat. 4. p. 425.
[124]Prodr. Flor. Nov. Holl. 1. p. 185.
[125]Triraphis Pumilio, panicula coarctata abbreviata, locusta glumam vix superante 3-4-flora: flosculo infimo hermaphrodito; reliquis neutris univalvibus.