102 Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermacee. 
six petals, also 2-serial, smaller than the inner sepals, rounded, 
extremely fleshy, the edges folded inwards so as to embrace and 
almost conceal a stamen fixed on its claw; each filament bears 
two small anther-cells half imbedded in its substance. A single 
sterile ovary is sometimes seen in the centre of the male flower, 
being columnar, somewhat ventricose, and terminated by a 
fungiform stigma: this I found of usual occurrence in the 
typical species, but I have not met with it m the few flowers 
examined of other species. In the female flowers, the petals 
are divaricated, less fleshy ; and the six sterile shorter stamens 
stand erect and free round three gibbous ovaria, supported on a 
short gynecium. In the typical species, the fruit is gibbously 
oval and somewhat compressed, about an inch long, having its 
stipitate enlargement near the middle of the ventral side, at 
some distance from the persistent stigma: it 1s covered by a 
coriaceous indehiscent husk, of a yellowish colour, that becomes 
dark in drying; between this and the putamen is a yellowish 
mesocarp, having the consistence of an arillus, and apparently 
formed of rounded masses aggregated together, corresponding 
in size to the large areoles indicated by the grooved lines on the 
surface of the putamen: it dries into a horny substance insoluble 
in water or alcohol. In the Guiana species, the fruit is cylin- 
drically oblong, with a laterally basal support, and with the 
remains of the stigma in its apex, the putamen being quite 
cylindrical, and the embryo straight. The peculiar structure of 
the putamen and seed has been already noticed in the diagnosis 
of the tribe Anomospermee : one of its chief peculiarities consists 
in the form of its condyle, which is a laminiform and longitu- 
dinal osseous plate, projecting from the ventral face of the 
putamen to near the centre of the cell, and upon which the seed 
is folded and attached ; several other short transverse plates 
project across the dorsal face of the cell, which penetrate into 
the sinuosities of the albumen, after the manner of many Ano- 
nacee ; these, however, are only adventitious processes. The 
lamellarly ruminated structure of the albumen much resembles 
that of Tilacora, and the embryo, either straight or uncinately 
curved, is equally elongated and slender; but the radicle is 
relatively much shorter, and the cotyledons are accumbent im 
the one, and incumbent in the other. 
Mr. Bentham, in his ‘ Notes on Menispermaceae, in accordance 
with the system he has so extensively adopted, considers all the 
plants of this genus reducible to a single species. It is impos- 
sible to concur in this opinion, which is absolutely incompatible 
with the facts here registered. 
ANOMOSPERMUM, nob. — Flores dioici vel rarius polygami. 
