FLORA OF BRITISH INDIA. 



ORDER XCV. ASCLEFIADEJE. (By J. D. Hooker.) 



Herbs or shrubs, usually twining. Leaves opposite or obsolete, very rarely 

 alternate, quite entire, exstiptilate. Inflorescence various, usually an axillary 

 uuibelliforoi cyme ; flowers regular, hermaphrodite, 5-merous. Calyx inferior, 

 lobes or segments imbricate. Corolla lobes or segments valvate or overlapping to 

 the right, very rarely to the left ; tube or throat often with a ring of hairs, 

 scales, or processes (the outer or coralline corona). Stamens at the base of the 

 corolla, filaments free in Periplocece with or without interposed glands ; in other 

 tribes, connate into a generally very short fleshy column, which usually bears a 

 simple or compound ring or series of scales or processes (inner or staminal 

 corona) that are attached to the filaments or to the back of the anthers, or to 

 both ; anthers crowning the column, connate or free, adnate by the connective to 

 the stigma, 2-celled ; tip often produced into an indexed membrane ; pollen 

 forming one or two granular or waxy masses in each cell, the masses united in 

 pairs or fours to a gland (corpuscle] which lies on the stigma. Ovary of' two 

 distinct superior carpels, enclosed within the staminal column ; styles 2, short, 

 uniting' in the stiyma, which is 5-angled short and included between the 

 anthers, or is produced beyond them into a long or short simple or 2-fid column ; 

 ovules many, rarely few, 2-seriate in each carpel. Fruit of 2 follicles. Seeds 

 compressed, usually flat ovoid winged and surmounted with a dense long brush 

 of hriirs (coma) (absent in Sarcolobus) ; albumen copious, dense ; embryo large ; 

 cotyledons flat, radicle short, inferior. DISTRIB. Species about 1,000, chiefly 

 tropical. 



The analysis of the plants of this order is most difficult, and in dried specimens 

 never satisfactory, from the fleshiness and complexity of the coronal processes and 

 anthers. I have spent many months over the Indian ones, and have kept pretty close 

 to the generic limits adopted in the "Genera Plantarum." I have, however, been 

 obliged to abandon .the tribe Stapeliea, to suppress Vincetoxicum, and to propose 

 several new genera. 



SUBORDER I. Periplocese. Filaments usually free ; anthers acuminate 

 or with a terminal appendage ; pollen-masses granular, in pairs in each cell, 



TRIBE I. Periploceae. Characters of the Suborder. 

 * Coronal scales or processes 0. 

 Anthers with bearded appendages 1 PENTANURA. 



** Coronal scales corolline, free, short, thick. 



Corolla vei-y small, rotate, lobes valvate-.- 2. HEMIDESMUS. 



TOL. IV. B 



