70 PENTANDRIA DiGYNiA. Gentiaua. 



Male flowers numerous, small, and collected on 

 small, axillary, solitary short-peduncled fascicles. Calyx 

 five-leaved ; leaflets oval, hoary. Petals five, length of 

 the calyx, but narrower and smooth. Nectarial scales five 

 on the base of the petals, small, oval, alternate with, the 

 filaments. Filaments five, from the receptacle, alternate 

 with the petals, and shorter than them ; anthers cordate. 

 Hermaphrodite flowers on a difiierent tree and 

 disposed as in the male. Calyx, corol, nectary, and sta^ 

 mina as in the male. Germ ovate, cordate, a little com- 

 pressed, downy, two-celled, with two ovula in each, at- 

 tached from the apex to the top of the cells. Styles 

 two, recurved. Stigmas somewhat two-lobed. Capsule 

 transversely oval, two-lobed, soft, with grey olive-colour- 

 ed down, size of a nutmeg-, two-celled, two-valved, open, 

 ing round the apex. Partition slender. Seed (nuts ?) one 

 in each cell, or lobe of the capsule, oblong, more convex, 

 on the outside completely covered with a soft scarlet 

 or exterior tunic. Integuments two besides the red aril ; 

 exfmor of a tough fibrous ensiform texture, and very 

 ragose on the outside ; interior soft, and spongy. Peris- 

 perm none. Embryo inverse ; cotyledons two, conform to 

 the seed. Plumula from two to five-lobed. Radicle short, 

 superior. 



In habit this tree approaches Willdenow's two Geloni- 

 ums, and in the structure and contents of the germ and 

 mature seed vessel, they agree almost exactly, except in 

 the absence of a perisperm in this ; yet their flowers dif- 

 fer widely, here they are pentandrous with a five-petalled 

 corol, male on one tree and hermaphrodite on another ; 

 completely dioecous, no corol, polyandrous. 



GENT I AN A. Schreb. gen. 450. 



Corol one-pe tailed. Capsule superior, two-valved, one- 

 celled ; receptacles two pair, longitudinally adjoined to 

 the inside of the margins of the valvelets. 



