SOUTHERN ASIA AND AFRICA. 585 
base, or in the middle of the cavity, or disposed along the greater 
part of its length. The style is filiform and curved, always smooth, 
and in many species more or less thickened and cartilaginous a 
little above the ovary. The stigmatic gland either terminal and 
subcapitate, as in most Genzstee, or more or less oblique or decur- 
rent along the upper or outer edge of the style. 
The pod is (in almost all species) peculiar to the genus. More 
or less laterally compressed, the lower suture is either straight or 
curved, or convex above the middle, and the upper suture is always 
convex or angled elow the middle, so that when the upper end is 
straight and tapering, the form of the pod is semi-lanceolate or 
semi-ovate, where the extremity turns upwards and the pod is 
shortened it becomes more or less rhomboidal. The obliquity is 
constant, even in the Macrocarpæ, where the pod is almost linear 
like that of Zebeckia, and in the Leptanthæ, where it is short and 
ovate almost like that of Amphithalea. In the Pachycarpe and 
Laterales, it is very thick, in A. pachyloba, almost fleshy ; its 
general consistence is coriaceous, the surface is smooth or hairy ; in 
some Pachycarpe it is woody. 
The leaves of Aspalathi, sometimes heathlike, cylindrical, or 
three angled, sometimes flat or concave and coriaceous, with one 
or three longitudinal nerves, are always entire on the margin and 
sessile without the intervention of any articulated support, and in 
this they are analogous to those of the simple leaved Crotalaria 
and Lupines, which have been considered as phyllodineous. But 
in Aspalathus they are generally arranged three together,* on a 
slight callosity of the stem, thus resembling the folioles of the — 
compound-leaved: Genistea, the callosity representing an abortive 
petiole. In the axilla there are frequently a number of additional 
similar leaves, proceeding from an abortive branch, and forming 
with the external ones, the characteristic fascicle of the genus. In 
they are biseriate, but the two placentæ being apparently combined, the ovules always 
appear uniseriate, unless they are near enough together to overlap each other. 
* It is often said that they are three or five together, or fascicled, but whenever 
there are more than three in the fascicle, I have always found the additional ones 
inside, and only three or one outside. 
