MIRABILIS NYCTAGINACE 4 565 
1-seeded nut contained in a foliaceous tubular involuere. 
* * Flowers monecious or dicecious, all in aments: ovary superior. 
90 Betulacex Trees or shrubs with simple leaves with distinct deciduous 
stipules: staminate flowers iu long aments; pistillate in shorter or head- 
like aments: fruit a many-seeded cone with thickened and rigid scales. 
91 Myricacez Shrubs with simple leaves mostly without stipules: flowers 
moncecious or dicecious, without calyx: fruit small, often waxy-coated, 
drupelets. 
92 Salicacex ‘Trees or shrubs with simple leaves with scaly and decidn- 
ous or foliaceous and persistent stipules: fruit many-seeded capsules. 
Orper LXXIV NYCTAGINACE Lindl. Nat. Syst. 231. 
Herbs, some tropical genera trees or shrubs with fragile stems 
and tumid joints, watery juice, entire petiolate mostly opposite 
leaves without stipules and perfect flowers in terminal or axillary 
clusters often subtended by an invol ucre. Calyx corolla-like, tu- 
bular to campanulate, the persistent base indurated and constric- 
ted over the ovary. Stamens few, hypogynous, with slender 
filaments and rounded 2-celled anthers. Ovary 1-celled, witha 
solitary campylotropous ovule. Style short or elongated. 
Stigma capitate. Fruit consisting of the hardened base of the 
calyx, enclosing the free achene. 
1 Mirabilis Involucre 5-lobed, not changed in fruit stamens usualy 5: 
fruit not angled or winged. 
2 Allionia Involucre calyx-like. deeply 5-lobed, 3-5 flowered: stamens 
3-5: fruit with a double row of tubercles on the back surrounded by a 
winged margin, 
$ Abronia Involucre of 5 or more distinct bracts surrounding a many- 
flowered head: calyx salverform, including the stamens and style: fruit 
wing-angled. 
“1 MIRABILIS L. 
Perennial herbs with opposite leaves and showy flowers in in- 
volucrate terminal clusters. Involucre calyx-like, 5-cleft or 5- 
parted 1-12-flowered, not changed in fruit. Calyx corolla-like, 
tubular or more orless broadly funnelform with a spreading limb. 
Stamens usually 5, as long as the calyx: filaments united at base. 
Stigma capitate, granulate. Fruit globose to ovoid-oblong, 
smooth.obscurely or not at all ribbed or angled. 
M. Greenei Watson Proc, Am, Acad. xii, 263. Somewhat glandular- 
puberulent: stems very stout and branching 2-3 feet high: leaves rather thick 
ovate, acute, 2-3 inches long, attenuate toa short stout petiole: involucre ac- 
utely lobed, 1—14¢ inches long, 7-10-flowered: calyx dull red, or whitish nearly 
2 inches long, funnelform: fruit ovate-oblong 3-4 lines long, usually abruptly 
contracted near the base, rather strongly 5-angled. On barren clayey hill- 
sides near the Klamath river in California, perhaps in Oregon farther east. 
