BOTANICAL 



107. NY^^}^^MXGEJE. [2. BOUGAINVILLEA. 



DIVISION III.-APETALiE. 



FAM. 107. NYCTAGINACE^. 



Herbs, shrubs or trees with usually opposite, entire, exstipulate 

 leaves. Flowers small or mod. -sized, sometimes showy or often showy 

 from being subtended by an involucre of coloured leaves, at other 

 times minute in heads, cymes or umbels, which are sometimes panicled. 

 Perianth or calyx gamophyllous, petaloid with the tube persistent 

 and accrescent, limb 3-5-lobed, plaited in bud. Petals 0. Stamens 

 8-30, hypogynous, sometimes unilateral, filaments usually unequal, 

 inflexed in bud, anthers didymous. Ovary free, 1-carpellary, 1 -celled, 

 style involute in bud with simple or multifid stigma. Ovule 1, 

 erect, between anatropous and campylotropous. Fruit a thin- 

 walled achene, enclosed in the hardened perianth-tube. Seed erect, 

 albuminous, with the embryo curved or spiral, or straight with folded 

 cotyledons, radicle inferior. 



I. Flowers dioecious, 1-sexual. Embryo straight with crumpled 

 cotyledons :— 

 Shrubs with opp. or alt. leaves and greenish cymose fls. . 1. Pisonia. 

 II. Flowers 2-sexual. Embryo hooked : — 



A. Climbing shrubs with alt. leaves and tubular lis. with a 



coloured involucre of large bracts 2. Bougainvillea. 



B. Herbs:— 



Fls. showy, 1-3 in a calyx-like involucre . . . .3. Mirabilis. 

 Fls. small or minute in heads or umbels, bracts minute . •!. Boerhaavia. 



1. PISONIA, L. 



Trees or shrubs, sometimes spinous. Leaves opp. or alternate. 

 Flowers inconspicuous, green, usually dioecious and 2-3-bracteolate, 

 in corymbose cymes. Perianth 5-10-toothed, funnel-shaped in male, 

 tubular in female. Stamens 6-10, exserted. Ovary sessile, oblique 

 with capitate or feathery stigma. Fruit with the hardened perianth 

 nut-like. Embryo with crumpled cotyledons enclosing a scanty 

 soft albumen. 



1. P. aculeata, L. 



A stout sarmentose shrub (sometimes climbing) with stout recurved 

 thorns and opposite or subopposite sometimes ifascicled leaves 1-3" 

 long, thinly pubescent beneath. Flowers green or greenish-white, 

 males in close corymbose cymes, females in fruit in lax divaricate 

 cymes easily recognised by the long-pedicelled 5-angled glandular- 

 glochidiate clavate-oblong nuts -3" long. 



Only in the south of Puri district and not far from the sea ! Fl., Fr. Feb.-May. 



Bark pale, smooth on the branches. L. obovate to narrowly elliptic and 



orbicular on same plant, shortly bluntly acumiuate, sec. n. 3-5 weak, obliquely 



spreading. M. fl. •1-"12", funnel-shaped with 7-8 far exserted stamens. Fern. 



,,j|yoid obscurely toothed. Fruiting pedicels "5" loug. Nuts tomentose between 



^^e ribs. 



^ 2. BOUGAINVILLEA, Comm. 



Large scandent thorny shrubs (or erect outside our area) with 

 alternate leaves. Flowers somewhat coloured but rendered very 



49 755 



