140 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



Flowers in groups of three, two staminate above one pistillate, or 

 the male flowers in pairs and the female separate at the base of the 

 spadix, or its branches; rarely the sexes in separate inflorescences, but 

 still on the same plant. 



Flowers with distinct three-parted calyx and corolla; stamens 

 G to 24 ; pistils of three coalesced carpels, rarely with 4 to G carpels ; 

 stigmas usually short and not coalesced. 



Fruits with apical stigma scars; outer skin firm or membranous, 

 covering a fleshy or fibrous pulp or husk and a bony endocarp repre- 

 senting the three coalesced carpels, and each carpel perforated by an 

 operculate foramen for the emergence of the seedling at germination. 



Seeds usually single, sometimes two or three, or even four to six, 

 round, or oblong, or segmental; albumen not ruminate, solid, or 

 with a central cavity, sometimes including liquid. Embryo basal, 

 peripheral, or apical, located opposite the largest of the foramina. 



Germination direct or by the extension of a long burrowing cotyle- 

 don ; first leaf-blades entire. 



Family MANICARIACEAE. 



Inflorescences with numerous subequal simple branches, rising 

 from a short axis. 



Spathes two. the outer usually short, the inner complete, inde- 

 hiscent, spread out into a fibrous network by the growth of the 

 flowers and fruits. 



Flowers of both sexes on the same inflorescence, the staminate 

 crowded above, the pistillate separate below. 



Male flowers with delicately membranous semicircular, broadly im- 

 bricate sepals united at base. Petals firmly coriaceous, triangular, 

 valvate, with punctiform impressions on the outer surface. Stamens 

 27, the anthers four or five times as long as broad, tw T ice or three 

 times as long as the slender, basally attached filaments. 



Female flowers with calyx and corolla similar to those of the male 

 flowers, but larger. Staminodes represented by 9 slender filaments. 

 Pistil large, triangular-obconic or turbinate, the three sessile stigmas 

 grown together into a conic or pyramidal process. 



Family PHYTELEPHANTACEAE. 



Inflorescences not branched, those of male plants projecting as 

 long, exposed, flower-covered cylinders, those of female plants short- 

 ened into a head. 



Spathes of male inflorescences tw T o, sheathing, but short and incom- 

 plete; those of female inflorescences very numerous, mostly bract* 

 like, only the two lowest sheathing the spadix. 



