236 MR. G. BEKTHAM OK EUPHORBIACE.E. 



zilian ones, and remains unpublished, though Planchon long since 

 indicated in the Hookerian Herbarium its connexion with Chce- 

 tocarpus. 2. Mettenia, 2 West-Indian species, evidently very 



closely allied to Chatocarpus ; but the flowers are as yet very im- 

 perfectly known, and there are some slight differences in the 

 dehiscence of the fruit. 3. Gelonium, a genus of about 12 species, 

 from tropical and southern Africa and tropical Asia, having no 

 immediate connexion with any other one, and at once recognized 

 by the fig-like stipules leaving an annular scar at each node, and 

 the clusters of flowers always strictly leaf-opposed, apparently 

 indicating the constant abortion of one leaf of each pair of op- 

 posite ones. 4. JBaliospermum, 4 East-Indian species, running 

 much into each other, but well defined as a genus and differing 

 from others in this subtribe in the much looser inflorescence. 

 5. Phyllobotryum, a very imperfectly known tropical African 

 species, described only from male specimens. Baillon appears to 

 have found a minute very young bud in which he thought he 

 traced a perfect one-celled ovary with parietal placentae ; but this 

 requires further confirmation, for the habit of the plant is quite 

 Euphorbiaceous. 6. Erismantlius, a Peiiang species with a very 

 marked habit, but uncertain as to its affinities, the male flowers 

 having only been seen in very young bud, and the ripe fruit being 

 unknown. The young fruit, with the very much enlarged folia- 

 ceous calyx, is that of Dimorphocalyx, but the habit and inflo- 

 rescence very different, and the male calyx, young as it is, evi- 

 dently imbricate. 



Subtribe 7. Plukenetie^;. I have endeavoured to gather 

 together under this name a number of apetalous genera with the 

 calyx of Acalyphese, but remarkable for the thick fleshy column 

 or mass into which the styles are united nearly to the apex, where 

 they form short terminal lobes — a character repeated only in a few 

 genera of Hippomaneae and constant in Plukenetiese, except in a 

 few species of Tragia and Cnesmone included in Plukenetiese on 

 other grounds. The subtribe consists of two very distinct groups, 

 the first five genera being erect not much branched trees or 



shrubs, with the large leaves usually crowded at the ends of the 

 stems or branches ; the remaining seven, with the exception of a 

 very few species, are either shrubby or herbaceous climbers or 

 twiners, or herbs with short ascending stems. The genera are: 

 1. Enivrinus* a single Malavan snecics remarkable for the ve 





