GENERAL KEY TO THE GAMOPETALOUS ORDERS. 3 



^ ^_ Ovary few-several-celled, with solitary ovules iu the cells, usually only 

 one maturing into a large bony-coated seed in a fleshy pericarp. 



83. SAPOTACE..E. Shrubs or trees, mostly with milky juice and alternate simple 

 leaves. Flowers small, hermaphrodite, tetra-heptamerous. Calyx and corolla much 

 imbricated in the bud ; the latter often bearing accessory lobes or appendages within, 

 sometimes petaloid staminodia also. 



***** Ovary inferior or superior, few-several-celled : cells of the fruit 

 one-seeded : stamens at least twice as many as the petals or lobes of the 

 corolla, sometimes indefinitely numerous and borne on or united with their 

 base or tube : flowers regular : shrubs or trees, with simple alternate leaves, 

 sometimes a resinous but no milky juice. 



84. EBENACE^E. Flowers dioecious or polygamous; the male ones polyandrous. 

 Ovary superior and corolla hypogynous. Styles as many oi' half as many as the 

 cells of the ovary, distinct or partly united. Fruit fleshy, containing solitary or few 

 large seeds with bony testa and cartilaginous albumen. 



85. STYRACACEiE. Flowers hermaphrodite, nearly pentapetalous and a numerous 

 cluster of stamens aduate to base of each petal, or more gamopetalous and the fewer 

 stamens monadelphous in a single series. Style and stigma entire. Corolla epigy- 

 nous, in Stijrax perigynous. Fruit dry or nearly so, one-four-seeded, when dehiscent 

 the seed bony : albumen fleshy. 



****** Ovary or gynoecium superior, dicarpellary, or in some monocar- 

 pellary, very rarely tri-pentacarpellary, sometimes appearing to be tetra- 

 carpellary by the division of the two ovaries : stamens borne on the corolla 

 (in apetalous Oleacece, &c., on the receptacle), alternate with its divisions 

 or lobes, of the same number or fewer. 



-1— Corolla not scarious and veinless, 



■H- Regular with stamens fewer than its lobes or petals, or no corolla : style 

 one : seeds solitary or very few. 



88. OLEACEiE. Trees or shrubs, with opposite (rarely alternate) leaves : no stipules, 

 no milky juice. Stamens usually two, alternate with the carpels ; these two-ovuled, 

 or sometimes four-ovuled : seed mostly solitary, albuminous. Forestiera and part of 

 Fraxinus apetalous and even acblamydeous. 



■H- -H- Corolla regular and stamens as many as its divisions, five or four. 

 = Ovaries two (follicular in fruit) ; their stigmas and sometimes styles perma- 

 nently united into one: plants with milky juice: flowers hei-maphrodite : 

 leaves simple, entire. 



87. APOCYNACE^E. Stamens distinct, or the anthers merely connivent or lightly co- 

 hering : pollen ordinary. Style single. 



88. ASCLEPIADACEiE. Stamens monadelphous and anthers permanently attached 

 to a large stigniatic body : pollen combined into waxy pollinia or sometimes granu- 

 lose masses. Carpels united only by the common stigmatic mass. 



