116 Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula. 



bent vertically on itself at right angles. Apodytes andamanica, Kurz, 

 Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1872, II, 296 ; Hook. fil. Fl. Br. Ind. I, 587. 



Andaman and !N"icobar Islands ; Kurz. Narcondara Island ; Prain. 



This species was published as an Apodytes by Kurz. The stamens 

 ovary and fruit however are exactly those of Oomphandra, to which 

 gsnns I therefore transfer it. In Apodytes the stamens have long 

 narrow anthers and short filaments, while the style is oblique and ex- 

 centric, more or less curved, and the stigma small, the fruit being more 

 or less orbicular or reniform with the scar of the stigma lateral. 



14. Lasianthera, Pal. de Beauv. 



Trees or shrubs, sometimes scandent. Leaves alternate, simple, 

 penni-nerved, coriaceous. Floivers dichlamydeous, bisexual, in stalked 

 fixillary cymes. Calyx minute, cupular, 4- or 5-lobed. Petals 5, free 

 or rarely cohering, the apex iuflexed. Stamens 5, hypogynous, free, 

 alternate with the petals; the filaments flat, broad, the connective 

 dilated behind and bearing a tuft of long hairs curving over the anther 

 in the bud; anthers adnate, 2-lobed, dehiscing lengthwise. Hypo- 

 gynoas disk cup-shaped, more or less corrugated. Ovary ovoid, 1-celled, 

 tapering into a subulate style, terminated by a minute stigma ; ovules 

 2, pendulous. Fruit drupaceous ; stone fibrous outside, woody within. 

 Seed pendulous ; embryo in albumen, cotyledons leafy and broad, radicle 

 superior. — DiSTRiB. Species 4, one Afi-ican, the others Malayan. 



The genus Stemonurus, as originally constituted by Bhime in 1825, contained 

 three species. One of these has been referred by Messrs. Bentham and Hooker to 

 the older genus LasiantJiera, which was founded by Palisot-Beauvois in 1805; while 

 the other two species of Blume, viz., 8. parviflorus and S. javanica, have been placed 

 in the genus Oomphandra Wall, as defined by Lindley (Nat. Syst. Ed. II, p. 439). 



This arrangement is not, however, accepted by all botanists who have written 

 concerning these genera. Miers (Contrib. I, 80) for example considers Gomphan. 

 dra Wall, and Stemonurus, Bl. as identical, and both as undistinguishable from 

 Lasianthera, Pal -Beau v. ; while Beccari (Malesia I, pp. 107, et seq.) keeps up all 

 three genera, and in this, he is followed by Valeton (Olacineae pp. 207, et seq.). M. 

 Baillon, like Miers, includes the other two in Lasiandra which however he places in 

 the natural family Terehinthacese. Dr. Masters (in Hooker's Flora of British India) 

 follows Messrs. Hooker and Bentham, and I do so also. I have, however, modified the 

 generic characters of LaManthera and Oomphandra, and I have not followed 

 Dr. Masters altogether in his allocation of the species. I find the best characters 

 to distinguish Oomphandra from Lusianthera to be these : — Lasianthera, flowers 

 truly hermaphrodite, stigma minute, — Oomphandra flowers practically unisexual, the 

 stameniferous flowers having rudimentary ovaries and the seed-producing flowers 

 having large cylindrio ovaries with large discoid stigmas, and usually abortive 

 Btamena. 



604 



