230 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



PHYSIANTHUS ALBENS. 



By Charles Ahmstrong. 



Read before the Biological Section November Jfth, 1889. 



The plant which I bring before your notice to-night belongs to the- 

 Order Asclejnadece, a large order of more than 600 species, nearly- 

 all of them very beautiful climbing plants, some of the rest vexy 

 curious. 



Periploca Grceca is I think the only hardy shi-iib ia the order. All 

 the rest ai'e natives of hot climates. The genus Hoy a (the wax-plant 

 of our greenhouses) are fleshy-leaved creeping or climbing plants with 

 umbels of sweet wax-like flowers. The Pergularias, climbing yellow 

 flowered plants, are also beautifully sweet. Sap of Gymnema Lacti- 

 ferwii, a native of Ceylon, is used instead of milk where milk is 

 scarce. Some others are used for food. On the other hand this 

 plant on the table, a Stapelia (you would think it a cactus) with 

 Duvalia, Orbea, Obesia, Tridentia and others in which the stems are 

 fleshy, with small points or bracts instead of leaves, have flowers rich 

 in colours and markings, but so ofiensive in odor that they almost 

 make you sick; I might say that they smell like rotten meat. A few 

 of the order are natives of our own country. You know them by the 

 names of A. Cornuti (railk-.weed), A. Tuberosa, (pleurisy root), etc. 



I have thus far trespassed on your time in order to give you some 

 idea of the strange diflference which may exist in an order. The 

 plant before us is the Physlanthus Albens. The calyx is large, tive- 

 parted; corolla, companulately urceolate with five swellings outside at 

 the base, and a corresponding number of cavities inside; limb, 

 spreading a little, five-cleft ; column, inclosed ; stamineous corona of 

 five leaves ; leaflets, cucullate, furnished each with a horizontal scale 

 outside ; anthers, terminated by a membrane ; pollen, masses pendul- 

 ous, fixed by their tapering tops ; stigma, ovate, two-horned at the 

 apex; follicles, ovate, ventricose, bent downwards, semi-bilocular ; 



