rXXlI. EUrHORBIACE.f: (brown, HUTCHINSON AND PRAIN). 441 



Okdek CXXIL EUPHORBIACE^. (By N. E. Brown, 

 J. Hutchinson and D. Prain.) 



Flowery monoicioiis uv dioDcious, usually regular. Perianth 

 occasionally absent in one or both sexes, usually small, often 

 dissimilar in the two sexes, simple, valvate or imbricate, calycine, 

 rarely petaloid, or double, both outer and inner calycine and imbricate, 

 or the inner petaloid, imbricate, rarely sub valvate, longer or shorter 

 than the outer. Male: stamens definite or indefinite (1-1000); 

 filaments free or connate ; anthers 2- (rarely 3-4-) celled ; cells usually 

 parallel, adnate to the connective throughout or free except at base 

 or apex and erect, divaricate or suspended, rarely superposed ; 

 dehiscence usually longitudinal, rarely porous. Rudimentary ovary 

 present or absent. Female : ovary sessile, rarely shortly stipitate, 

 usually 3-, frequently 2- or 4-, very rarely 1- or more than 4-celled ; 

 styles usually as many as and continuous with the carpels, free or more 

 or less connate, Greet or spreading, entire or 2-fid or laciniate ; inner 

 face of styles or style-arms usually stigmatic throughout ; ovules in 

 each cell solitary or 2 collateral, pendulous from the inner angle ; 

 funicle often thickened. Disk annular, entire or lobed, or of free 

 contiguous or discrete scales, or none. Fruit usually capsular of 

 2-valved cocci separating from a persistent axis, or indehiscent and 

 drupaceous, 1-3-celled or of a single or 2-3 connate nuts. Seeds 

 attached laterally near or above the middle of the cell, with or without 

 a caruncle or an arillus ; albumen usually copious, fleshy ; embryo 

 straight, radicle superior, cotyledons broad, flat, rarely thick, fleshy. — 

 Herbs, shrubs or trees, often with milky juice. Leaves alternate or 

 opposite, simple or rarely compound, sometimes rudimentary; stipulate 

 or exstipulate. Flowers usually small or veiy small ; inflorescence rather 

 variable. 



Species about 1000, mostly in the tropics of both hemispheres. 



Excluded genera. 



Bricchettia, Pax in Ann. Istit. Hot. Koma, vi. 181 = Cocculus Leceha, DC. — 

 Mcnispermaceae. 



GiLGiA, Pax in p]ngl. Jahrb. xix. 80 = Glossonema Revoili, Franch. — 

 Asclcpiadacea?. 



SciiUBEA, Pax in Engl. Jahrb. xxviii. 22, is a mixture. The leaves are those of 

 Cola pugionifera, K. Schum.,and the inflorescence that of Trichoscypha ferruginea , 

 Engl. 



TuiBE I. Eupliprbleae. Apparent flower composed of a numher of stamens 

 {really male flowers, each consialing of a single stamen jointed to a pedicel and 

 soon falling away from it, tvith or without a minute or rudimentary perianth) mingled 

 with bracteoles, with or without one stalked ovary [really a pedicellate female 

 flower, with or without a small or rudimenCary or very rarely comparatively large 

 perianth) in their midst, enclosed in a cup-shaped or ^-angled involucre, the whole 

 resemhling a small male or hermaphrodite flotcer^ or 4 involucres composed of free 

 hi avis containing the stamens, st(2)poried by an open i-loled common involucre. 



