88 



B A L ANOPHOR ACEjE. 



[Rhizogens. 



Order XXVI.— BALANOPHORACEjE.— Cynomoriums. 



Balanaphorote, Rich, in Mem. Max. 8, 420. (1S-2-J) ; F.ndlkh.i- M,Ut,,„uta, p. 10. (1S32) ; gen. xxxix. 

 Meimtr, p 366; Jwnghvna in hoc. act. xviii. tuppt. ; Griffith, Proceedings linn. Soc. No. xxii. 



Uiagsosis. — Stems amorphous, fungoid ; pedimcles scaly : flowers in spikes ; ovules solitary, 



pendulous ; fruit one-seeded. 



Fig. LXIII. 



" Leafless, brown, red, white, or yellow (never green) root-parasites, with under- 

 ground fleshy horizontal branched rhizomes, or more generally amorphous tubers, 

 from which spring erect simple (rarely branched) peduncles, that are naked, or 

 covered with scattered or imbricating scales, rarely combined into an involucre. 

 Flowers red, yellow, or white, unisexual (rarely bisexual), monoecious or dioecious, 

 collected into dense, spherical or cylindrical, entire, lobed, or branched heads, often 

 mixed with simple articulated filiform or club-shaped filaments. Bracts very variable, 

 or absent ; sometimes, when the heads are lobed, large, peltate, and imbricated, each 

 subtending and often covering a lobe (branch) of the head ; at other times the bracts 

 are scattered promiscuously amongst the flowers ; sometimes they are peltate, and 

 connected by their contiguous edges into an areolate indusium, that falls away piece- 

 meal as the head enlarges; atothei'S the flowers 

 are arranged on their stipes. Male flowers con- 

 spicuous, usually white, pedicelled, exserted 

 beyond the filaments and female flowers, gene- 

 rally at the base of hermaphrodite heads, or 

 scattered irregularly amongst female flowers, 

 rarely wholly naked, then consisting of anthers 

 crowded on a branched spike. Perianth tubular 

 or funnel-shaped, entire or split, or more fre- 

 quently 3-5-lobed, with valvate aestivation : lobes 

 patent, or reflexed, fleshy, white, or highly- 

 coloured. Stamens usually 3-5, with both fila- 

 ments and anthers more or less connate or free, 

 the latter frequently forming a lobed 6-12-celled 

 mass, bursting outwards, or rarely inwards. 

 (Stamen solitary, epigynous, and introrse, in 

 bisexual flowers of Cynomorium. Stamens 3, 

 marly free and extrorse in Langsdorffia; 3 and free in Sarcophyte, where each 

 h lament bears a capitate anther, that breaks up into a many-celled mass. Anthers 



Fig. LXIV. 



Fig. LXIII. Scybalium fungiforme. 1. A male plant ; 2. a female; 3. male flowers with hairs 

 between them ; 4. females ; 5, a vertical section of a female, with the two pendulous ovules ; 6. a 

 section across a ripe fruit. 

 . V M' I J ^ IV - Cynomorium coccineum. 1. A section of the ripe fruit, showing the embryo on the 

 right of the albumen ; 2. a portion of the nucleus very highly magnified, showing the embryo and the 

 angular cells among which it lips. N.R. Those cells ai-e separated bythe pressure of a compressorium. 



