FLORA OF BRITISH INDIA. 
OkDER XCV. ASCLEPIADIEZE. (By J. D. Hooker.) 
Herbs or shrubs, usually twining. Leaves opposite or obsolete, very rarely 
alternate, quite entire, exstipulate. Inflorescence various, usually an axillary 
umbelliform cyme ; flowers regular, hermaphrodite, 5-merous. Calyx inferior, 
lobes or segments imbricate. Corolla lobes or segments valvate or overlapping to 
the right, very rarely to the left; tube or throat often with a ring of hairs, 
scales, or processes (the outer or corolline corona). Stamens at the base of the 
Corolla, filaments free in Periplocee with or without interposed glands ; in other 
tribes, connate into a generally very short fleshy column, which usually bears a 
simple or compound ring or series of scales or processes (inner or staminal 
Corona) that are attached to the filaments or to the back of the anthers, or to 
oth ; anthers crowning the column, connate or free, adnate by the connective to 
the stigma, 2-celled; tip often produced into an inflexed membrane ; pollen 
orming one or two granular or waxy masses in each cell, the masses united in 
pare or fours to a gland (corpuscle) which lies on the stigma. Ovary of two 
istinct superior carpels, enclosed within the staminal column ; styles 2, short, 
uniting in the stigma, which is 5-angled short and included between the 
anthers, or is produced beyond them into a long or short simple or 2-fid column; 
ovules many, rarely few, 2-seriate in each carpel Fruit of 2 follicles. Seeds 
compressed, usually flat ovoid winged and surmounted with a dense long brush 
of hairs (coma) (absent in Sarcolobus) ; albumen copious, dense ; embryo large ; 
Pics jeans flat, radicle short, inferior—Drsrr1B. Species about 1,000, chiefly 
Pical. 
The analysis of the plants of this order is most difficult, and in dried specimens 
never satisfactory, from the fleshiness and complexity of the coronal processes and 
anthers. I have spent many months over the Indian ones, and have kept pretty close 
to the generice limits adopted in the “Genera Plantarum." I have, however, been 
obliged to aban don the tribe Stapeliee, to suppress Vincetoxicum, and to propose 
Several new genera, 
SUBORDER I. Periploceæ. Filaments usually free ; anthers acuminate 
Or with a terminal appendage; pollen-masses granular, in pairs in each cell, 
Trier I, Periploceæ. Characters of the Suborder. 
* 
Coronal scales or processes 0, 
Anthers with bearded appendages . . . . . . . + . 1. PENTANURA. 
* . 
* Ooronal scales corolline, free, short, thick. 
Co 
rolla very small, rotate, lobes valvate . . . . . . . 2. HEMIDESMUS. 
OL, IV. B 
