508 ODOKOGKAPHIA. 



half an inch across. The female flowers have indefinite abbreviated 

 staminodes, and a globose ovary with about 5 parietal placentae. 

 The female flowers are succeeded by very numerous orange-coloured 

 berries, which appear, from dried specimens communicated by the 

 discoverer to the British Museum Herbarium, to be about as large 

 as a small cherry. The berries are many-seeded, the seeds lying 

 in pulp. Tlie tree appears to be cultivated in Japan for its 

 fruits. The flowers are deliciously fragrant, their odour 

 resembling that of a Vancla : and although their colouring is not 

 brilliant, their effect, combined with the red leaf-stalks, the 

 varying green of the leaves, and their elegant drooping habit, is 

 extremely pleasing. The plant was figured in " The Garden," 2nd 

 Feb., 1878. 



Chloranthus. 



A genus of tropical Chlorantliacecc consisting of small, evergreen, 

 aromatic, herbaceous plants or undershrubs, having jointed stems, 

 tumid under the articulations, and opposite, simple leaves, with 

 sheathing petioles and minute intervening stipules. The flowers 

 are hermaphrodite and disposed in terminal, loose, slender spikes, 

 fragrant. The ovary is one-celled, consisting of a single carpel 

 with one pendulous ovule, and the seed has a large quantity of 

 albumen, the embryo being very minute. 



C. inconspicuous, Swartz, in Phil. Trans., Ixxvii., p. 359, t. 15. 

 A suffruticose plant of about one foot in height. Xative of China 

 and Japan. The leaves are ovate-oblong, obtuse, serrated, pale 

 beneath ; spikes axillary, branched, branches alternate, flowers, 

 opposite ; anther 3-lobed, middle lobe perfect and 2-celled, the 

 lateral ones imperfect and 1-celled. This plant is consideied to be 

 identical with Nigrimi spicata, Thunb., Flor. Jap., p. 65. 



C. officinalis, Blume, Enumeratio Plantarum Javae, i., p. 79, and 

 Flor. Jav., p. 10, t. 1. A shrub of 3 to 4 feet in height. Xative of 

 Java, in high mountain woods. Leaves oval-oblong or lanceolate, 

 the superior ones more acuminated than the rest. Spikes branched, 

 terminal; anther 3-lobed, middle lobe perfect and 2-celled, lateral 

 ones imperfect and 1-celled. The whole plant has an aromatic and 

 fragrant smell. It is used medicinally by the Javanese. 



C. monander, E. Brown, in Bot. Mag., under Xo. 2190. A 



