104 ILLUSTRATIONS OF INDIAN BOTANY. 
XXXI.—AURANTIACEA, Rae 
This very beautiful, and on account of its fragrant flowers and delicious fruit, much admired 
order, of which the orange with its numerous varieties of lemons, limes, citrons, pumplemoses, 
&c. form the type, is generally well known in India (to which country indeed it almost exclu- 
sively belongs) even to the most casual observers of plants. But though so generally known in 
its more perfect forms, it is not always easy to recognize those more remote from the type of 
the family. : 
The order generally is composed of handsome flowering ever-green trees and shrubs, occa- 
sionally armed with strong spines, abounding in glands filled with volatile oil, usually very con- 
spicuous in the leaves when held between the eye and the light, and exhaling a fragrant odour. 
Their leaves are alternate, simple, or compound. In the former as in the latter instance the petiols 
are jointed, indicating a tendency to become compound. So constantly is this the case, that 
simple leaves with such petiols are sometimes described as “ pinnate reduced to the terminal leaf- 
let.” The petiols are often dilated or winged. The flowers are bisexual, for the most part white, 
variously arranged in solitary and axillary flowers, or in racemes, panicles, corymbs, &c. 
‘he calyx is short, more or less urceolate, or campanulate at the base, 3-5 lobed, withering. 
Petals equalling the number of the lobes of the calyx and alternate with them, inserted outside 
of the torus, broad at the base, distinct, or sometimes cohering, deciduous, imbricated in gestiva- 
tion. Stamens equal or double the number of the petals, or more rarely, are very nu- 
merous and indefinite, inserted in a single series into the torus: filaments compressed, either 
altogether free or united into a tube, or variously polyadelphous, subulate, and fiee at the 
point. Anthers 2-celled, attached by the base, or the middle of the back, dehising longitudi- 
nally, introrse. Ovary free, 2-3-5 or many celled, with one or several ovules in each, Style 
cylindrical, or rarely wanting. Stigma large, somewhat lobed, or flat and spread over the apex 
of the ovary. “ Fruit (an orange) consisting of several (or 1 by abortion) membranacious 
carpels, with or without an internal pulp, and surrounded by a thickish indehiscent rind 
abounding in vesicles full of volatile oil. Seeds attached to the inner 
solitary, or numerous, usually pendulous : raphe and chalaza usually very conspicuous : Albumen 
none. Embryo straight, radicle next the hilum, partly concealed within the cotyledons. Coty- 
ledons large, thick and amygdaline,” 
_ Arrinitizs. The plants of this order are most readily known by the number of oily re- 
ceptacles, which are dispersed all over them; the leaves, sepals, petals, and fruit equally par- 
taking of them; by their deciduous petals, and compound leaves, and frequently winged petiols. 
By these peculiarities they are nearly related to Amyridee and Zanthoxylacee, from neither of 
which is it always easy to distinguish them, except by the fruit. Several species referred by 
Roxburgh to his genus Amyris, actually belong to this order. r they are di 
tinguished by the numerous, not solitary, cells of the ovary, and b 
cious, or samaroid, or legume-like fruit: from the latter their bi, not 
and their indehiscent pulpy fruit, not 2-valved dehiscent capsules seat 
solitary shining black seed. 
Geocrapuicat Distaisution, Tropical Asia and h 
rs later, raises the number to 60, but many of these doubtfal : 
ime i c : described in our Prodromus as 
natives of the Indian Peninsula: one or two have been Since added to the Peninsular list and 
T have several species from Ceylon, and some from Mer 1. One species only, is found to with- 
stand exposure to frost and snow, the Limonia lauriola, Wallich (Pl. As. rar ) which is found 
Pie es of cold and lofty mountains, where it is for some months of the year buried under 
7 
i 
The properties of the orange in all its protean forms of lemon 
