<94 EUPHORBIACEM. [BREYNIA. 



truncate ; styles very short. Fruit globose, about J in. in diam . 

 smooth, succulent, dull-red or purple. 



Sub-Himalayan tracts and in the forests of Oudh and Bundelkhand ; 

 abundant in open scrub lands and often met with in hedges. 

 Flowers in April and May. DISTRIB. : Throughout tropical India ; 

 extending to Ceylon. Burma, China, the Malay Islands and the 

 Philippines. 



8. PHYLLANTHUS, Linn. ; Fl. Brit. Ind. v, 285. 



Herbs, shrubs or trees. Leaves distichous, the branehlets with 

 J their leaves often resembling pinnate leaves, entire, stipules usually 

 narrow or none. Flowers small, monoecious, rarely dioecious, 

 axillary or on the old nodes ; males usually many, fascicled, sub- 

 sessile or pedicelled, rarely few or solitary ; females in the same 

 or in distinct axils with longer pedicels, solitary or few ; perianth 

 simple. MALE-flowers : Sepals 4-6, free or nearly so, imbricate, 

 more or less 2-seriate. Disk glandular, rarely none. Stamens 

 3, rarely 4 or 5, in the centre of the flower, filaments free 

 or connate, anthers 2 -celled, oblong or didymous, rarely reniform ; 

 cells parallel or diverging, dehiscence extrorse. vertical or trans, 

 verse. Pistillode none. FEM. -flowers : Sepals as in male. Petals 

 none. Disk glandular. Ovary usually 3-celled; styles free or con- 

 nate, usually 2-fid. and with slender arms ; ovules 2 in each cell. 

 Fruit of 3 crustaceous or coriaceous rarely bony 2-valved cocci, 

 sometimes a 4-celled berry or a drupe with a 3-4-celled bony epicarp. 

 Seeds trigonous, testa crustaceous, hilum without a caruncle, 

 albumen fleshy, cotyledons flat or flexuous. Species about 400 

 'in all warm countries. 



Stamens 5, in 2 series, the 3 inner filaments 



connate. A shrub, often scandent . . 1. P. reticulatus. 



.Stamens 3, filaments united in a column, rarely 

 free and recurved : 



Anthers erect, slits vertical, connective 

 usually produced : 



Fruit large, fleshy, containing 3 bony 

 2-valved cocci ; disk absent in the male- 

 flowers ; styles connate below, twice 

 2-fid. A tree 2. P. Emhlica. 



