GENERAL KEY TO THE POLYPETALOUS ORDERS. xv 



= = Calyx small : petals valvate : fruit baccate: leaves (with rare exceptions) 

 palmately lobed or palmately or pinnately compound, alternate. 



43. VITACEJD. Mostly woody vines climbing by prehensile or gland-bearing ten- 

 drils. Flowers small, regular, diclilamydeous. Petals 4 or 5, sometimes free 

 sometimes coherent, often caducous. Ovary (in ours) 2-celled ; ovules geminate in 

 the cells. 



^- 4- 4- H- Sapindales. Ovary superior, often strongly lobed or divided ; 

 ovules 1 or 2 (very rarely cc) in each cell, mostly ascending or horizontal : 

 stamens as many as the petals and alternate with them or twice as many or 

 much more often of some irregular number. 



44. SAPINDACEuSi. Trees, shrubs, or woody (rarely herbaceous) tendriliferous 

 climbers, ours with compound or palmately lobed leaves and commonly polygamo- 

 dioecious often irregular flowers. Disk annular or more or less deeply lobed, often 

 unsymmetrical, rarely obsolete. Fruit various, most frequently samaroid, or a 

 bladdery or coriaceous capsule. * 



-I- -1- -i- •)- -1- PoLYGALiNE^. Ovules pendulous, solitary (rarely and only 

 in foreign genera 2 to 4) in the cells of the 2(-5)-locular ovary ; rhaphe 

 ventral : disk glandular or none : stamens mostly 8 and monadelphous, more 

 or less adnate to the petals : seeds mostly carunculate. 



45. POLYGALACE^. Ours low herbs, undershrubs, or erect rarely thorny shrubs. 

 Pubescence of simple hairs or none. Leaves entire, alternate, opposite, or whorled. 

 Flowers pseudo-papilionaceous, dichlamydeous, rarely solitary, mostly in terminal 

 racemose, spicate, or capitate inflorescences ; these sometimes corymbosely arranged. 

 Calyx with sepals very unequal, three usually sepaloid and two larger showy and 

 petaloid. Fila:nents short ; anthers dehiscent by terminal pores or oblique introrse 

 slits. 



