352 MALPIGHIACE^. Aspicarpa. 



6. ASPICAUPA, Ricli. ('Ao-tti's, used in the Latin sense, viper, KapTro's, 

 fruit, the nutlet likened to a viper's head.) — Low or diffuse suffrutescent 

 plants, or woody-based herbs (of Mexico and adjacent borders). Slender erect 

 or diffuse stems hardly at all twining, strigulose-pubescent with medifixed hairs. 

 Glabrate or glabrous leaves. Flowers axillary or terminal. — Mem. Mus. Par. 

 ii. 398, t. 13 3 Lag. Nov. Gen. & Spec. 1 ; DC. Prodr. i. 583 ; A. Juss. 1. c. 343, 

 t. 21. 



A. longipes, Gray. Stems diffusely spreading or decumbent, 2 or 3 feet long : leaves oval 

 or ovate-oblong, obtuse and with rounded or subcordate base, thinnish, veiny (a third to inch 

 and a half long), lower short-petioled : petaliferous flowers somewhat umbellate at ends of 

 branches, with petals quarter inch long ; cleistogamous flowers solitary on filiform axillary 

 peduncles, and subtended by a pair of small foliaceous bracts : nutlets smoothish and with 

 rounded or slightly margined lateral angles. — PI. "Wright, i. 37, ii. 30. — S. W. Texas to 

 Arizona; first coll. by Wright, then by Thurber. (Adj. Mex., some forms near to A. Hart- 

 wegiana, A. Juss.) 

 A. hyssopifolia, Gray. Stems erect, a span to a foot high : leaves linear-lanceolate or 

 linear and closely sessile or partly clasping by a broadish base (half inch to inch long) or 

 lowest short and oval, nearly veinless, glabrous : flowers all axillary and solitary ; petalifer- 

 ous on bractless peduncles nearly equalling the leaf, the fimbriate-edged petals 2 or 3 lines 

 loug ; cleistogamous sessile : nutlet reticulate, with acutely crested back and marginless 

 sides. — PI. Lindh. pt. 2, 167, & PI. Wright. 11. cc. — S. Texas, on and near the Rio Grande, 

 Wright. (Adj. Mex., Berlandier, Palmer.) 



Order XXXI. ZYGOPHYLLACE^. 



By a. Gray. 



Herbs or hard-wooded trees and shrubs, the branches commonly with articu- 

 lated nodes, with opposite or alternate leaves, these more commonly pinnate and 

 always impunctate, the leaflets entire ; the 1-flowered peduncles often springing 

 from the axils of the stipules, which are interpetiolar when the leaves are oppo- 

 site. Flowers perfect, 5-merous (rarely 4-6-merous), regular and mainly sym- 

 metrical, all the parts free and hypogynous. Stamens double (in one genus 

 rarely triple) the number of the petals and the outer series opposite them. 

 Sepals mostly imbricate and petals either imbricate or convolute in the bud. 

 Pistil of as many carpels as petals (or rarely twice as many or fewer), combined 

 into a few-several-celled ovary and terminated by a common style and barely 

 lobed stigma ; ovules solitary or several in the cells, anatrojious or nearly so, 

 with micropyle superior. Fruit never baccate ; embryo large and straight or 

 merely curved. Leaves, when opposite, usually with one (sometimes suppressed 

 or abortive) smaller than its fellow. Largely African and Asian ; a few reach- 

 ing our southern borders. 



Peganum, which belongs here rather than with Rntace(v, is anomalous in the number of sta- 

 nien.s, mostly fewer carpels, and numerous seeds. In the .nlternate leaves it agrees with two 

 Mexican genera, Sericodes and Vhitonia, of which the former may possibly belong to our 

 flora, for 



Sericodes Greggii, Gray, occurs not far south of New Mexico. 



