EPIGYNEiE 315 



spicuous, in axillary panicles, or racemes. The 

 perianth is superior in the female flower, petaloid, 

 tubular below, with six segments, in two series, per- 

 sistent, regular. There are six stamens in the male 

 flowers, or three stamens and three staminodes, in- 

 serted on the base of the perianth-segments. The 

 anthers open inwards. The ovary is inferior, trilocu- 

 lar, the placentae axile or parietal and unilocular. 

 There are three short styles, and the stigmas are 

 entire or lobed. There are two ovules in each loculus, 

 or one to three, anatropous one above the other, erect 

 or collateral. The fruit is a capsule or berry, dry and 

 flat in the former case, three-angled, three-celled, 

 either indehiscent and one-celled, when baccate, or 

 three-valved, and loculicidal. The seeds are winged, 

 flattened, or round. The endosperm is hard, dense, 

 horny, and quite surrounds the small embryo. 



The Yam (Dioscorea) forms an article of food, 

 being poisonous and acrid, but edible when boiled, 

 and as a cultivated plant yielding a white and mealy 

 variety, others being yellow, watery, and bitter. The 

 berries of Black Bryony are poisonous. The tubers 

 of another plant of the genus Testudinaria are also 

 used as articles of food; the Hottentot Bread, T. 

 elephantipes, being cultivated as a greenhouse plant. 

 Willis describes it thus : " It has the general habit of 

 a Dioscorea, but has an enormous tuber projecting 

 out of the soil, with a thick outer coating of cork. 

 This tuber is the swollen first internode of the stem. 

 From it yearly, during the wet season, there springs by 



