Ficus.| CXXIIIc. MORACEH (Hutchinson). 79 
membranous and hyaline; stamens 1-2, or rarely 3-6, with straight 
short filaments; anthers more or less oblong or ovoid, exserted or 
included ; rudimentary ovary 0 or very rarely present. Female 
flower: perianth-segments often fewer and narrower than in the 
male or rarely minute; ovary mostly obliquely ellipsoid or ovoid ; 
style almost invariably lateral, short or slender and rather long ; 
stigma usually oblong; ovule laterally attached and pendulous 
from near the apex of the cell. Achene partially enclosed within 
the persistent perianth; pericarp crustaceous and dry or rarely 
succulent. Seed pendulous, with a membranous testa; albumen 
often scanty; embryo curved, with often plicate and subequal 
or equal cotyledons with the radicle incumbent.—Trees, shrubs or 
rarely climbers, with milky juice. Leaves alternate or very rarely 
opposite, entire, dentate or variously lobed, very variable in shape 
and venation; stipules enveloping the terminal bud, caducous at 
the unfolding of the leaves or more rarely persistent. Receptacles 
(figs) sessile or pedunculate, mostly paired when axillary or 
sometimes solitary, when borne on the trunk or main branches 
remote from the leaves then in leafless panicles or more usually in 
fascicles, 2-3-bracteate at the base with the bracts in a whorl or 
' more rarely several bracts scattered on the peduncle and over the 
receptacle. Bracts at the mouth (ostiole) of the receptacle in several 
series, small, spreading horizontally across the mouth and then 
visible from outside or all descending abruptly into the interior of 
the receptacle and not visible from outside, the ostiole in the 
latter case being pore-like. Male flowers in the African species 
usually very few and near the ostiole, rarely mixed amongst 
the female and gall flowers; female flowers usually numerous 
and sessile; gall flowers mostly numerous and long-pedicellate. 
Bracteoles among the flowers usually small and inconspicuous or 
absent. 
About 700 species, spread throughout the tropics and subtropics of both 
hemispheres. 
Ficus elastica, Linn., the india-rubber fig, and F. Carica, Linn., the common 
edible fig, are both cultivated in Tropical Africa. The latter species, 
according to Welwitsch (cf. Hiern in Cat. Afr. Pl. Welw. i. 1008), is grown 
7" Angola and affords well-tasted fruit, but always inferior to that grown in 
urope. 
Excluded Species. 
F. obovata. Sim, For. Fl. Port. E. Afr. 101, t. xciv. C.,is a species of Cordia, 
(Boraginex) and very near C. abyssinica. 
F. ralumensis, Warb. in Notizbl. yee is Bot. Gart. Berlin, ii. 112, is erroneously 
attributed to Tropical Africa by the Index Kewensis ; Ralum is in the Bismarck 
Archipelago, Polynesia. 
Urostigma binderianum, Kotschy in Sitzb. Akad. Wien. Math. Nat. li. (1865) 
353 is Anona senegalensis, Pers.—T ype seen in the Vienna Herbarium. 
