406 RUBIACE®. . Hepyoris. 
tube, or a little below it: anthers roundish, oblong, or short-linear. Ovary 
crowned with a fleshy disk. Style filiform. Stigma bifid or 2-lobed, rare- 
ly entire. Capsule obovate, ovate or globose, crowned with the limb of 
the calyx, 2-celled, dehiscing at the apex within the calyx in a direction 
transverse to the dissepiment, at length sometimes splitting to the middle or 
to the base, and either loculicidal or septicidal. Seeds usually minute, nu- 
merous and angled, rarely few or solitary in each cell.— Herbaceous, suffru- 
tescent, or shrubby plants. Stems 4-angled or terete: branches sometimes 
compressed. Stipules cohering with the petioles, usually fringed with seve- 
ral bristles, rarely entire. Inflorescence various. 
This may well be called a polymorphous genus, and not in habit only, but also in 
characters. Chamisso and Schlechtendal, and De Candolle, have lopped off portions, 
but in several instances the distinctive marks proposed, if attended to in practice, 
which they are certainly not in De Candolle’s prodromus, although the best and 
last enumeration of the species, would remove plants, otherwise very closely allied, 
to a distance. We shall therefore follow Brown and Wallich, by retaining the ge: 
nus entire, and even add to it one species which, if the number of seeds afforded a suf- 
ficient character, would be rather placed near Spermacoce, but which is a Hedyotis in its 
mode of dehiscence and. almost all its other characters. Houstonia, having stipules, 
and an adherent or at all events a half adherent ovary, belongs to this compound 
genus, as has heen already remarked by St Hilaire: nor do we well understand why 
all the other French botanists ascribe to it a free ovary, and thus remove it to the 
Gentianee.—We have divided the genus into perhaps too many sections; We have 
done so for the sake of pointing out the structure of the flower or fruit of the diffe- 
rent species, in order that, when the others which do not fall within our notice arè 
examined with the same minuteness, the genus may be divided with more rigorous 
. and definite characters than have hitherto been presented. 
.  Szer. 1. Calyx-segments with the sinus somewhat obtuse. Corolla infundi- 
— - buliform, hairy in the throat and on the lower part of the lobes: tube @ 
little longer than the limb of the calyx, wide at the mouth: lobes ob- 
- long, about the length of the tube, or shorter. Anthers oblong-linear, 
exserted, Ovary with the placentas oblong and ascending. Capsule with 
the apex more or less 4-lobed and slightly produced beyond the calyx- 
tube, at length septicidal, splitting to the base into two somewhat bony 
cocci. Seeds numerous, minute, angled.—Shrubs or suffrutescent plants. 
Stipules ovate, pointed, with usually several filiform teeth along the 
margins. Flowers in panicled or corymbiform thryses, terminal a 
from the upper axils, rarely in sessile, terminal or axillary capituli.— 
Diplophragma.* 
* Closely allied g: irae other groups, neither of which occur in the Peninsula :— d 
l. Macrandria. Calyx-limb 4-partite : ment: » ed, the sinus som ; 
rounded. Corolla widely infundibuliform, papery, much Decani oi ibo thiger arid along the segments? 
tube very short, not half so long as the segments of the calyx: Jimb deeply 4-cleft; segments linear. 
Filaments at length long (much longer than the corolla), filiform : anthers oblong-linear. Ovary crown: 
ed with a tuft of numerous erect short bristles. Style exserted, shorter than the stamens, d Mur 
sule globose, somewhat 4-lobed at the apex, protruded slightly beyond the calyx, bicoccous the coc 
crustaceous, open on their inner face, splitting from the apex pes way down the back. Seeds pume 
rous, minute.—Suffruticose, all over softly pu ex side of the leaves. Sti- 
pules truncated, short, ciliated with several long rigid bristles (as In Spermurace). , Flowers 
celled, in small compact capituliform peduncled terminal (or from their upper axils) corymbs.—H. maz — x 
erostemum, Hook. and Arn. in Bot. Beech. Voy. p. 192. 
2. Dimetia. Calyx-limb 4-toothed; teeth carinate, , erect, in fruit distant with @ rounded sinus. 
Corolla widely infundibuliform, papery, much bearded in the throat and along the segments + 
short : segments linear, longer than the tube. Filaments long, filiform: anthers linear-oblong. Oen. 
pubescent on the apex, somewhat turbinateand 4-angled, Style bearded between the stigma (H. eem 
&c.), or glabrous ( H. capitellata, &c.), shorter than the stamens, C. dry, coriaceous, with the 
compressed and protruded beyond the tube of the calyx, splitting at the apex (and there only) t soll 
ly to the dissepiment. Seeds numerous.—T wining suffruticose plants, usually glabrous, sometimes psi 
t. Stipules connected into a loose truncated cup, with a single longish cuspidate TAS 
middle on each side. Flowers shortly pedicelled and corymbose (H. scandens, Roxb. all. | 
939; H. volubilis, Br. in Wall.! L. n. 840; and H. polycarpa, Br. in Wall.! L. n. 838), Or eri 
(H. capitellata, Br. in Wall. ! L. n. 837; and H. mollis, Wall, ! L. n. 859), arranged In 
subterminal corymbs or panicles. : 
