APETALiE 235 



branching may be racemose, the rest cymose. The 

 partial inflorescence may be compressed, and then 

 appears as though there were but a single flower. 

 The flowers are small, and bear bracts or possess an 

 involucre. The plants are dioecious or monoecious. 

 The flowers are regular, hypogynous. The apparent 

 flowers are really flower-heads in Euphorbia. There 

 is no perianth, or if so it is in two whorls ; or there 

 may be only one, the calyx ; or the flower may be 

 achlamydeous. The parts of the flower are in fives. 

 The male flowers possess one or more stamens. The 

 stamens may be branched or united. The anthers 

 are didymous. There is a rudimentary (or no) ovary. 

 The superior ovary in the female flowers is two- to 

 three-lobed and two- to three-celled. There are one 

 to three styles. The stigmas are compound or 

 simple, entire or lobed. In fruit the carpels separate 

 by an elastic movement both from each other and the 

 axis, opening by two valves. The ovules are one to 

 two, collateral, pendulous from the top of each cell, 

 anatropous, and the panicle is swollen over the 

 micropyle, and covered by a caruncle. The raphe is 

 ventral. The fruit is a schizocarp, or capsule, two- to 

 three-lobed, the cells one- to two-seeded. The seeds 

 are pendulous, the testa crustaceous, albuminous, 

 with much fleshy endosperm, the embryo axile. 



Honey is secreted by the moon-shaped glands of the 

 cup-shaped involucre, and is quite exposed. The sta- 

 mens are jointed (ten to fifteen), being flower-stalks of 

 a reduced inflorescence, and there is a single female 



