o52 CXVII. GNETACER. 
into a long, exserted tube, with an oblique, expanded or lace- 
rate mouth. Seed with a hardened or a fleshy coat ; embryo 
antitropal, in the apex of fleshy albumen ; cotyledons 2, radicle 
superior.—Ligneous plants, of very varied habit; only 1 South 
African, the most wonderful of ligneous plants. 
1. WELWITSCHIA, Hook. f. 
Polygamo-dicecious ? Flowers in cones; scales of the 
cone quadrifariously imbricate, most of them floriferous, 
much enlarged in fruit. Flowers either hermaphrodite 
or female.—Hermaphrodite flowers: Perianth 4-leaved, the 
leaflets 2-seriate, the inner connate. Stamens 6, monadel- 
phous; anthers 3-celled. Integument of the ovule single, 
ending in a_stigma-like disk—Female flowers: Perianth 
bladdery, much-compressed, 2-winged. Stamens 0. Ovyule 
as in the hermaphrodite flower, but the stylform process 
straight, with a simple, torn apex. Fruit dry, concealed 
within the membranous scales of the female cone.— Abridged 
trom Hook. f. in Trans. Linn. Soe. xxiv. pp. 1-48. t. 1-14. 
A. mirabilis, Hook. f., is a most singular, ligneous, 2-leaved plant, gammy 
at the crown; it grows in Damaraland, near Waalvisch Bay, and north- 
wards to Cape Negro. Trunk very thick, top-shaped or globose, the greater 
portion sunk in the soil, more or less compressed beneath the insertion of 
the leaves, cross-ridged and furrowed round the circumference, and above 
theleaves dilated into 2 ample, depressed, rough, floriferous lobes corre- 
sponding to the leaves, at base tapering into a long or short fusiform root, 
branching near its lower extremity. Leaves 2 (the persistent cotyledons), 
opposite, very long, linear-ligulate, obtuse, thickly coriaceous, soon torn by 
the winds and splitting into many longitudinal shreds. Floriferous lobes very 
hard, wider than the trunk, depressed in the middle, entire or multilobu- 
late, on the top marked with concentric, pitted ridges. Cone-bearig 
peduncles numerous, placed on the outer ridges, towards the circumference 
of the lobes, forked, terete, tumid and 2-bracteate at the nodes. Fruit- 
cones 2 inches long, scarlet, with persistent scales. 
Orper CXVIII. CONIFERZ. 
Flowers unisexual: Males of 1 or several monadelphous 
stamens in catkins; anthers 2- or many-lobed, often crested : 
Females of naked, atropous ovules, either solitary or in spikes 
or in cones. Fruit either a naked seed or a cone. Seed with 
a hard crustaceous coat. Embryo in the axis or apex of 
floury or fleshy albumen ; cotyledons 2 or more.—Trees or 
shrubs, abounding in resin, with small, parallel-vemed, mostly 
perennial leaves. The Pine, Yew, Cypress, etc. are examples. 
Susorper 1. Podocarpeze. Ovules solitary or subsoli- 
