184 ON SEEDLINGS 



RESEDACE.E. 



Benth. et Hook. Gen. PI. i. 110. 



The Eesedaceae constitute a small Order, containing from 

 thirty to sixty species according to the view taken by different 

 authors. The greater part of them are natives of dry countries 

 such as South Europe, North Africa, Syria, Asia Minor, and 

 Persia, with a few in the outlying provinces of India, and three 

 in Cape Colony. They consist of annual or perennial herbs, and 

 a few are shrubby. The leaves are alternate and scattered, or 

 crowded on short undeveloped branches, simple and entire or 

 trifid or pinnatisect. 



Fruit and Seed. The ovary consists of from two to six 

 carpels, with as many parietal placentas, and is closed at the 

 top, or open during the whole or the greater part of its growth, 

 as in Reseda, or gaping as in Caylusea. The ovules are numerous 

 as in Eeseda or one to two as in Astrocarpus. The latter is re- 

 markable in the mature state when its four to six carpels divari- 

 cate in a stellate manner, each containing one seed only. The 

 ovules are amphitropous or campy lotropous, and inserted on the 

 walls of the ovary or near the base of the cavity. The seeds are 

 numerous, or few in Astrocarpus and Caylusea, and two to three 

 in Eandonia ; they are reniform with a smooth testa or rough 

 in Eandonia, and are usually exalbuminous, but exceptions 

 occur as in the Capparideae. The fruit is capsular, follicular 

 (Astrocarpus), or baccate (Ochradenus) . 



The embryo is large and curved or complicated, filling the 

 interior of the seed. The cotyledons are incumbent, and in 

 Eeseda they constitute the greater part of the embryo, the 

 radicle being extremely short. Caylusea abyssinica (fig. 184) 

 forms an exception, inasmuch as an appreciable quantity of 

 endosperm surrounds the large embryo, while in the sinus 

 between the cotyledons and radicle lies a considerable thick- 

 ness of it. 



The seeds are reniform and slightly compressed laterally ; 

 and the cotyledons of the large embryo lie in the narrow plane 

 of the seed, with their tips curved round to the hilum, but their 

 backs to the placental axis. They are plano-convex and taken 



