Parsonsia. | APOCYNACE. 439 
OrpErR XLVIII. APOCYNACEZ. 
Erect or climbing shrubs, rarely trees or herbs, juice often 
milky. Leaves opposite or whorled, very rarely alternate, simple 
and entire; stipules wanting. Flowers regular, hermaphrodite, 
usually in axillary or terminal cymes. Calyx inferior, 4-lobed or 
-partite; lobes imbricate, often glandular at the base. Corolla 
gamopetalous, hypogynous, funnel- or salver-shaped; tube often 
hairy or scaly within; lobes 5, rarely 4, spreading, usually con- 
torted in the bud. Stamens 5, rarely 4, inserted on the tube of the 
corolla; filaments short; anthers often sagittate, either free or 
connate and adhering to the stigma; pollen granular. Ovary 
superior, usually composed of 2 carpels connate only by their 
styles, but in one tribe the carpels are wholly combined into a 
2-celled ovary with axile piacentas or into a 1-celled ovary with 
2 parietal placentas; ovules 2 or several or many; style single or 
separated at the base only, thickened above; stigma entire or 2-fid, 
often constricted in the middie. Fruit generally of 2 follicles open- 
ing along the inner edge, sometimes a drupe or berry. Seeds 
various, often with a tuft of silky hairs; albumen generally present ; 
embryo straight, radicle usually superior. 
A large order, abundantly represented in the tropics of both hemispheres, 
less plentiful in extra-tropical warm regions, and decidedly rare in the temperate 
zones. Genera about 100; species under 1000. The order includes many 
poisonous plants, some (as the ordeal-tree of Madagascar, Tanghinia venenifera) 
being exceedingly virulent. Others are employed medicinally as drastic purga- 
tives or febrifuges. A few species yield indiarubber, but on the whole the 
family is not of much economic importance. The flowers are often of consider- 
able beauty, and many genera are cultivated in gardens or greenhouses. The 
single New Zealand genus extends through Australia to India and Ceylon. 
1. PARSONSIA, R. Br. 
Twining shrubs, with long slender branched stems, often woody 
below. Leaves opposite. Flowers small, in terminal or axillary 
corymbose cymes. Calyx 5-partite, naked or glandular within or 
furnished with 5 scales. Corolla salver-shaped ; tube short, cylin- 
drical or nearly globular, throat naked; lobes 5, spreading, the 
edges overlapping to the right. Stamens inserted about the middle 
of the corolla-tube or below it; filaments often twisted; anthers 
included or exserted, cohering in a cone or ring round the stigma, 
cells produced into 2 rigid empty basal lobes. Hypogynous 
scales 5. Ovary 2-celled; style slender ; ovules numerous in each 
cell. Fruit elongated, cylindric, of 2 coherent follicles which ulti- 
mately more or less separate from one another. Seeds linear or 
oblong, numerous, with a tuft of long silky hairs at the tip. 
A small genus of about 12 species, found in tropical Asia, the Malay Archi- 
pelago, Australia, and New Zealand. Both the New Zealand species are 
endemic. 
