ELATINE^E 



231 



some of the species of Bergia they are smooth, and these 

 species are sometimes placed in a separate genus, Merimea. 



The embryo is cylindrical, conforming in outline to that 

 of the seed, which it wholly occupies. The radicle is close to 

 the hilum, much longer than the cotyledons and equalling 

 them in width. 



The Elatinea3 include twenty species of slender aquatic or 

 marsh herbs or small shrubs, creeping or spreading diffusely. 

 They are widely dispersed throughout the world, but most 

 abundant in the Old World, growing in shallow water like our 

 native Elatine Hydropiper, and E. hexandra. 



HYPERICINE2E. 



Benth. et Hook. Gen. PL i. 1(53. 



Fruit and Seed. The carpels vary from three to five ; rarely 

 reduced to one, as in Endodesmia calophylloides. The ovules 

 are usually numerous, ascending or horizontal from parietal 

 or axile placentas, and anatropous with 

 a lateral or superior raphe. The fruit 

 is a capsule in the tribes Hypericeae 

 and Cratoxylese, but baccate and inde- 

 hiscent in the Vismiese. That of En- 

 dodesmia, containing only one pendu- 

 lous seed, is a drupe, while that of 

 Haronga forms a drupe with five woody 

 pyrenes as in Cratsegus. The seeds 

 are exalbuminous, straight or rarely 

 curved, with a crustaceous, or more 

 often membranous, testa expanded into 

 a wing in Elisea and Cratoxylon. The 

 embryo is generally straight, but in- BIQ ZQ7f _ Hyperieum Andro . 

 curved in a few of the species of Hy- scemum. Nat. size, 



pericum, and always conforms to the 



seed. The cotyledons are flat, except in Endodesmia, where 

 they are thick and fleshy ; they are longer than the radicle 



