40 ON SEEDLINGS 



half, and deeply pinnatifid or bipinnatifid in the upper, shortly pubes- 

 cent on both sides ; ultimate lobes ovate or oblong-ovate, acuminate, 

 irregularly dentate. 



ARALIACE^:. 



Benth. et Hook. Gen. PI. i. 931. 



Fruit and Seed. In the last Order the ovary was in all 

 cases bicarpellary, and always two-celled except where the dis- 

 sepiment ultimately became lost or aborted. The ovary in this 

 case is also inferior, but possesses from two to many cells and 

 as many carpels. In a few cases the number is reduced to 

 one. The ovules are solitary in each cell, suspended from 

 the apex of the cavity, and anatropous, with the raphe usually, 

 if not always, ventral. The fruit is baccate or often drupa- 

 ceous, with a fleshy, or rarely membranous exocarp. The 

 endocarp is woody, crustaceous or cartilaginous, rarely mem- 

 branous, and whatever the number of carpels making up 

 the ovary, the endocarp of each is separately lignified, so that 

 the fruit can be broken up into as many pieces as there were 

 carpels. In multicarpellary fruits the seeds are more or less 

 compressed laterally or subtriquetrous owing to the mutual 

 pressure of the carpels to the interior of which they con- 

 form. The testa is always thin and membranous, and often 

 closely applied or adnate to the endosperm which is copious 

 and fleshy or cartilaginous, sometimes ruminated as in Hedera. 

 The embryo is always minute and embedded in the endo- 

 sperm close to the hilum ; the cotyledons are rounded, ovate 

 or oblong, and generally about the same breadth as the radicle. 



Amongst the more exceptional cases in the Order are 

 Cuphocarpus and Arthrophyllum with ovaries consisting of a 

 single carpel, and Tupidanthus with nearly one hundred carpels. 

 The fruit of Horsfieldia when mature separates into as many 

 pieces as there are component carpels, and the parts of the 

 fruit in several other genera are readily separable. 



Seedlings. The cotyledons amongst the few seedlings 

 observed in this Order are ovate, petiolate and distinctly 

 or indistinctly trinerved. Those of Aralia edulis (fig. 417) 



