LABIATE. 341 



1037.) — Maritime evergreen trees, of tropical regions, spreading from creeping 

 shoots ; their opposite entire and mostly canescent coriaceous leaves connected at 

 base by an interpetiolar line, giving the branchlets the appearance of being articu- 

 lated : peduncles axillary and terminal, commonly cymosely trichotomous : flowers 

 small, white or whitish, in late summer. 



A. nitida, Jacq. Leaves oblong or lanceolate-elliptical, glabrate and at length sometimes 

 shining above : peduncles ternate or trichotomous: lobes of corolla minutely sericeous or 

 tomentulose botli sides : style as long as stamens. — Jacq. Amer. t. 112, fig. 1 ; Schauer in 

 ])C. Prodr. xi. C99 ; Griseb. Fl. W. Lid. 502. A. tomentom, Meyer, Essequib. ; Nutt. Sylv. 

 iii. 79, t. 105, exserted style siiown. A. oblong ijblia, "Nutt.? " Chapm. Fl. 310: name not 

 mentioned by Nuttall in Sylv. 1. c. — Keys and coasts of S. Florida, and mouth of the 

 Mississippi. (VV. Ind. to Brazil.) 

 A. TOMENTOSA, Jacq. 1. c. fig. 2, with hardly any style, and corolla-lobes glabrous above, is 



in the Prodromus and in Chapman's Flora attributed to " Florida, Nuttall." But Nuttall's 



species figured under this name in the Sylva is clearly the A. nitida, and that is probably our 



only species. 



Order CIV. LABIATE. 



Herbs or low shrubs, with aromatic herbage (usually dotted with small im- 

 mersed glands replete with volatile oil), with square stems, opposite simple leaves 

 and no stipules ; the perfect flowers with irregular more or less bilabiate corolla, 

 didynamous or diandrous ; filiform style mostly 2-cleft and 2-stigmatose at apex, 

 and around its base the divisions of a 4-parted (sometimes only 4-lobed) ovary, 

 which are uniovulate and ripen into akene-like nutlets, in the bottom of a gamo- 

 sepalous calyx. Ovule and seed mostly amphitropous or anatropous, and erect. 

 Embryo straight except in the Scutellarinece, with plane or plano-convex coty- 

 ledons and inferior radicle : albumen usually none or hardly any. Lobes of the 

 corolla imbricated in the bud, the posterior or the upper lip exterior and the 

 middle lobe of the lower lip innermost. Stamens borne on the tube of the corolla, 

 distinct or rarely monadelphous ; the fifth (posterior) stamen, and in diandrous 

 flowers the adjacent pair also, not rarely represented by sterile filaments or rudi- 

 ments : rarely the 4 fertile stamens equal. Hypogynous disk generally present, 

 sometimes as (one to four) gland-like lobes. Pistil as in all the related orders 

 dimerous, each carpel deeply 2-parted or 2-lobed. Inflorescence thyrsoidal ; the 

 general evolution of the clusters in the axils of leaves or primary bracts (these 

 occasionally reduced to single flowers) centripetal ; that of the clusters (cymes or 

 glomerules) centrifugal. The pair of sessile clusters, one to each axil, having 

 the appearance of a whorl (verticil) form what has been termed a verticillaster. 

 Bracts or bractlets various. Leaves occasionally verticillate. Seed transverse 

 and the radicle incurved in Scutellarinece. (The Ajugoidece connect with the 

 tribe Vitlcece of the preceding order, and therefore are placed foremost. A 

 larger proportion of our Lahiatce are Old World naturalized plants than of 

 any other order.) — Benth. Lab. & in DC. Prodr. xii. 26 ; Benth. & Hook. Gen. 

 ii.lKiO. 



I. Nutlets rugose-reticulated, with introrsely very oblique or even ventral and 

 comparatively large areola (scar of the attachment) : ovary merely 4-lobed or not 

 deeply 4-parted. (Seeds in the tribe here represented, as in most of the order, 

 exalbuminous.) 



