32 ILLUSTRATIONS OF INDIAN BOTANY. 
Sepals 4, deciduous, cruciate, the lateral ones gibbous, or spurred at the base. Corolla 
hypogynous, cruciform, petals 4, alternate with the sepals, deciduous, stamens 6, the two, opposite 
the lateral sepals, shorter, and occasionally toothed, 4, in pairs, opposite the anterior and pos- 
terior sepals, longer: anthers bilocular, introrse. Torus with several glands between the petals 
and the stamens, and the ovarium. Ovary usually bilocular with parietal placente, generally, 
meeting in the iniddle, and forming a spurious partition, stigmas two opposite the placente, 
Fruit a siliqua or silicule, rarely one-celled and indehiscent, usually opening by two valves sepa~ 
rating from the placent#. Seeds attached in a single row, by a funiculus, to each side of the 
placent®, generally pendulous. Albumen none, embryo with the radical folded up on the coty- 
ledons : if on the edge they are said tobe accumbent, if on the back incumbent, sometimes the 
cotyledons are folded, they are then said to be conduplicate incumbent, &c. (In Nasturtium 
they are accumbent, in Lepidium incumbent, the cotyledons in the latter 3-lobed.) 
Arrinitizs. The nearest affinities of this order are with Capparidee, agreeing in the qua- 
tetnary number of the divisions of the flower: in the fruit having two placente, and a similar 
mode of dehiscence ; and in the stamens of some species of the Capparidee, agreeing in number. 
They have also some affinities with Fumariacee as already shewn under that order, but are 
kept distinct by the different structure of the seed. 
_ Essentran Cuaracter. Flowers polypetalous, stamens tetradynamous. Ovary wholly 
superior, the carpels combined into a solitary pistillum: seeds without albumen. Leaves alter- 
nate, destitute of stipules, 
Groararuicat Distrizution. I have remarked above that the species of this order aré 
very rare within the tropics. Europe indeed may be esteemed the head quarters of Crucifere 
‘ : ern hemisphere, and compara- 
tively rare in the southern : upwards of 600 appertaining to the one, and scarcely 100 to the 
: : net easil 
oma soon deteriorate, and I presume more rapi We Sivan chine grate 
ong interval that intervenes bet 
Propertizs anp Uses. Acrim | 
OPER : ony, m i i i 
predominant quality of the Orucifere, ih proof of wen eine with bitterness, forms the 
2 os mat , ress, the common Radish, and Water-cre 
tion, as aliment, possesses ine wtng co much of the acrid an, ameliorated by eultiva 
. . bed . * ; . oO 
their fates seperys e acrid properties inherent in the family. 
_ ants, i ay Dwi 
> eae — ction, it is exhal a feosece in their expressed Juices, though, pss — 
