THEACILE 



677 



the region of the Mohave Desert, growing as a low shrub and sometimes forming 

 thickets several acres in extent. 



Occasionally cultivated in western and southern Europe as an ornamental plant. 



XXXIX. THEACEiB. 



Trees or shrubs, with simple alternate leaves without stipules. Flowers per- 

 fect, regular, hypogynous ; sepals and petals 5, imbricated in the bud ; stamens 

 numerous; anthers 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; pistil of 3-5 

 united carpels ; ovary 3-5-celled ; styles as many as the cells of the ovary, 

 partly united. Fruit capsular ; embryo with large cotyledons. 



The Camellia family with sixteen genera is principally confined to the 

 tropics of the New World and to southern and eastern Asia. Two genera are 

 represented in the flora of the southern United States, and of these Gordonia 

 is arborescent. The most important genus, Camellia of eastern Asia contains 

 the Tea plant. Camellia Thea, Link, and several species cultivated for the 

 beauty of their flowers. 



1. GORDONIA, Ell. 



Trees or shrubs, with terete branchlets, without terminal buds, slender acuminate 

 naked axillary buds, and watery juice. Leaves pinnately veined, entire or crenate, 

 subcoriaceous and persistent, or membranaceous and deciduous. Flowers axillary, 

 solitary, long-stalked or subsessile; calyx subtended by 2-5 caducous bracts; sepals 

 unequal, rounded, concave, coriaceous, persistent; petals free or slightly united, 

 obovate, concave, white, deciduous; stamens numerous, filaments short, united at 

 the base into a fleshy cup adnate to the base of the petals and inserted with them, or 

 long and inserted directly on the petals; anthers introrse, yellow; ovary sessile; style 

 elongated, erect, o-lobed at the stigmatic apex; ovules 4-8 in each cell, pendulous 

 in 2 series from its inner angle, collateral, anatropous. Fruit a woody oblong or 

 subglobose o-celled capsule loculicidally 5-valved, with a persistent axis angled by 

 the projecting placentas. Seeds 2-8 in each cell, pendulous, flat, without albumen; 

 seed-coat woody, usually produced upward into an oblong wing; embryo mostly 

 straight or oblique, with oblong flat or oblique cotyledons; radicle short, superior. 



Gordonia with about ten species is confined to the south Atlantic states of North 

 America and to tropical Asia and the Malay Archipelago. 



