ROSACEA. 



415 



Chrysobalanus Icaco. 



each composed of a filament, which may be free or slightly adherent 

 to its neighbours, and a short introrse didymous anther dehiscing 

 by two longitudinal clefts. There 

 may be one or more stamens 

 reduced to their filaments. The 

 gynseceum consists of a unicar- 

 pellary one-celled ovary, super- 

 posed to a sepaV and a gynobasic 

 style stigmatiferous, but hardly, if 

 at all, dilated at the apex. Near 

 the base of the ovary is seen a 

 placenta bearing two collateral 

 ascending anatropous ovules, with 

 their raphes looking towards the 

 back of the cell, and their micro- 

 pyles downwards and towards the insertion of the style. The 

 receptacle, the calyx, and even the staminal filaments persist around 

 the base of the fruit, which is a drupe whose 

 adherent stone,^ indehiscent or incompletely de- 

 hiscent at its base, contains a single ascending 

 seed with membranous coats enclosing a large 

 fleshy exalbuminous embryo, with its radical 

 inferior. The Cocoa-plums are trees or shrubs 

 with alternate simple entire leaves, possessing 

 two lateral caducous stipules ; their flowers are 

 in axillary or terminal pedunculate cymes, 

 usually biparous. One species, C. ohlongifo- 

 lius,^ is a native of North America, The 

 other species, C. Icaco,'' is far better known, a native of the tropical 



Fig. 487. 

 Longitudinal section of flower (f ). 



Chrysohalanus ohlongifolius. 



of C. Icaco L., but when there are only about 

 fifteen stamens, as in C. ohlongifolius MiCHX., 

 we may easily see at every age that they are 

 what we have termed "stamens of the Rosacece," 

 and are not really "v.niseriata," as several authors 

 have supposed. In fact, of the fifteen stamens of 

 C. ohlongifolius, five are placed one in front of 

 the middle line of each sepal, and the rest one 

 on either side of each of these (fig. 488) ; but 

 there is no oppositisepalous stamen. In this 

 species their mouadelphy is evident, though not 

 very great. The pollen grains are, according 

 to H. MOHL {Ann. Sc. Nat, ser. 2, iii. 341), 



ovoidal or spherical in water, with three bands 

 covered with large papillae. 



1 Which is sepal No. 3 (fig. 488), as in all the 

 other plants of this series that we have been able 

 to examine from this point of view. 



- It is angular, often traversed below by 

 grooves of variable length and depth. The sar- 

 cocarp is said to become dry finally in certain 

 species. 



^ MiCHX., Fl. Bor. Amer., i. 285. — Nutt , 

 Gen. Amer., i. 301.— DC, loc. cit., n. 3. — ToER, 

 & Ge., Fl. N. Amer., i. 406. 



* L., Spec, 513.— .Tacq., Amer., 154, t. 94.— 



