THE COFFEE FAMILY 



63 



of its beautiful, scarlet flowers and edible, crimson fruit. The 

 stem is woody and bears opposite, sessile obovate-oblong leaves, 

 which being tough and leathery keep green and enable the plant 

 to flower .even in the hottest and driest season of the year. 

 Stipules interpetiolar, scarious. Flowers in dense cymose clusters 

 (corymbs) at the ends of the twigs. Calyx minute. Corolla a 

 long slender tube that spreads into a four-parted limb. The 

 four yellow stamens short-stalked and inserted between the lobes 

 of the corolla. Style and ovary as in coffee. Fruit a two-seeded 

 drupe with a fleshy scarlet exocarp. 



Oldenlandia Heyneii {Kan. Urki), a small, annual herb, very 

 common on the road-side and in open places. Stem erect, much 

 branched, acutely four-angled. Leaves linear, entire, glabrous, 

 one-nerved. Stipules cup-shaped, bristled. Flowers solitary or 

 in axillary few-flowered cymes. Corolla tubular, white, limb 



four parted. Stamens four, epi- 

 petalous. Ovary inferior, two- 

 celled. Fruit a many-seeded 

 capsule, opening across the apex. 

 Musssenda frondosa {Kan. 

 Bellotti), a straggling shrub, 

 with acuminate leaves, and ter- 

 minal compound cymes. Some 

 of the outer flowers of the cyme 

 with one of the five sepals en- 

 larged, forming a large white 

 stalked leaf (fig. 66). Corolla orange, long-tubed, limb five- 

 lobed, star-shaped, valvate in bud. Throat of tube filled with 

 villous hairs preventing water from wetting inner parts. Stamens 

 five inserted in the floral tubes at difterent heights in difi'erent 

 flowers: plants that have their stamens high up have short styles, 

 and other plants with their stamens lower down have long styles 

 on a level corresponding to the stamens of the first form: a nice 

 arrangement for cross-pollination by insects. Fruit a two-celled 

 berry with many seeds. 



In gardens we often see the beautiful Gardenia with its white 

 sweet-smelling flowers, which sometimes "double". In Morinda 



Fig. 66. — Muss(vnda frondosa. 



The large white leaf is one of the tive 



lobes of the calyx. 



