74 



1- or many-celled, with broad parietal placentae, which are covered with an indefinite number 

 of minute ovules. Fruit an inferior pulpy berry. Seeds extremely minute, (their nucleus 

 consisting of a mass of grumous matter. Blume.) — Parasitical brown or colourless plants, 

 without spiral vessels. Stem simple, covered with a few leaves in the form of scales. 

 Floivers in spikes or heads, or sojitary. 



Affinities. These very curious plants are all parasitical, with scales in 

 room of leaves. Among them is the very remarkable plant described by Mr. 

 Brown in the 13th vol. of the Linnean Society's Transactions, under the name 

 of Rafflesia, to which I refer those who are desinous either of knowing what 

 is the structure of one of the most anomalous of vegetables, or of finding a 

 model of botanical investigation and sagacity, or of consulting one of the 

 most beautiful specimens of botanical analysis which Mr. Bauer has ever made. 

 The affinity of these plants appears to be greater with Aristolochia^ than any 

 other phoenogamous tribe. But the most interesting circumstance of their 

 organisation is, that they exhibit in some degree the structure both of flow- 

 ering and flowerless, or of vascular and cellular plants. Like flowering or 

 vascular plants, they have a distinct floral envelope, and distinct sexual 

 organs, not essentially, or in fact very, different from those of ordinary vege- 

 tables. Like flowerless or cellular plants, they are destitute of all trace of 

 spiral vessels, and their seeds appear to be composed of a homogeneous mass 

 of grumous matter, in which no radicle or cotyledons, no ascending or de- 

 scending extremity, no definite points of vegetation, can be distinguished. 



Geography. Natives of the south of Europe, and the East Indies. 



Properties. Probably all astringents. Cytinns contains Gallic acid; 

 and, according to M. Pelletier {Bull. Pharm. 1813. p. 290.) it has the sin- 

 gular property of precipitating gelatine, although it does not contain tannin. 

 Rafflesia is used in Java as a powerful astringent, for certain purposes. 



Example. Cytinus. 



LXIV. SANTALACE^. The Sanders-Wood Tribe. 



Santalaceje, R. Brawn Prodr. 350. (1810) ; Juss. Diet, des Sc. Nat. 4?. 287. (1827) ; 



Lind. Synops. 207- (1829) — Osyride^e, Juss. in Ann. Mus. vol. 5. (1802) 



NvssACEyF,, Juss. in Diet, des Sciences, 35. 2G7. (1825) Osyiiin^e, Link Handb. 



1. 371. (1829.) 



Diagnosis. Apetalous dicotyledons, with definite pendulous ovules, 

 solitary flowers, and a 1 -celled ovarium, with a tubular superior calyx. 



Anomalies. Osyris differs in its dioecious flowers, in having, a trifid 

 calyx with only three stamens, and, according to the younger Gsertner, an 

 erect seed with an embryo curved and lying a little out of the axis of the 

 albumen, with its radicle superior, and therefore turned away from the hilum. 



Essential Character — Calyx superior, 4- or 5-cleft, half-coloured, with valvate 

 aestivation. Stamens 4 or 5, opposite the segments of the calyx, and inserted into their 

 bases. Ovarium 1 -celled, with from 1 to 4 ovules, fixed to the top of a central placenta near 

 the summit; style 1 ; stigma often Ibbed. Fruit 1-seeded, hard and dry, and drupaceous. 



Albumen fleshy, of the same form as the seed ; cmhryo in the axis, inverted, taper Trees 



or shrubs, sometimes nnder-shrubs or herbaceous plants. Leaces alternate, or nearly oj)po- 

 site, undivided, sometimes minute, and resembling stipula;. Floivers in spikes, seldom iu 

 umbels, or solitary, small, li. Br. 



Affinities. Closely allied to Elicagnose and Thymelacse. Mr. Brown 

 observes {Flinders, 569.) that one of the most remarkable characters of this 

 tribe consists in its unilocular ovarium containing more than one, but 



