418 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Lecostemon 

 Qardneriamcm. 



Fig. 491. 

 GynjEceum opened 



en 



basifixed caducous anther, with two lateral or slightly introrse cells 

 dehiscing longitudinally. These stamens are very numerous, 

 arranged in close-set whorls. They are inserted, just as in Chryso- 

 halanus and Licania, on the inner edge of a recep- 

 tacular cup, which also bears the calyx and corolla. 

 The former is short, with its edges divided into five 

 teeth or ill-marked crenelures, or else irregularly 

 sinuous or nearly entire. The latter consists of five 

 long exserted petals, imbricated in the bud. The 

 receptacle is lined by a glandular disk. In the bottom 

 is inserted the gynseceum (fig. 491), consisting of a 

 one-celled ovary and a gynobasic style, which tapers 

 at the tip and is grooved longitudinally along the 

 whole of its inner edge. The two reflexed lips of this 

 groove are covered with stigmatic papillae. Close to 

 the base of the ovary is seen a placenta bearing two 

 obliquely ascending or sub-horizontal ovules. The 

 fruit is a drupe, with a rather thin mesocarp ; within 

 its crustaceous stone is a seed, containing in its membranous coats 

 a fleshy embryo, with conferruminate cotyledons and an incurved 

 radicle. The genus Lecostemon consists of half a dozen shrubs from 

 Mexico, Guiana, and Brazil, with alternate entire 

 coriaceous petiolate leaves, whose two stipules are 

 sometimes scarcely visible ; the flowers are 

 grouped in racemes with simple or cymose 

 ramifications ; the pedicels often droop and be- 

 come more or less thickened after anthesis. 



With the same general floral organization as 

 the preceding genera, Stylohasium^ (fig. 492) is 

 peculiar in the hypogynous insertion of its 

 androceum The perianth is regular, forming a 

 broad cup with the rim flattened and divided 

 into five lobes quincuncially arranged in the 

 bud. The flowers are polygamous, and it is only 

 in some that the androceum is well developed. It is then represented 

 by ten exserted stamens, each formed of a very slender filament 



Stylohasium spathulatum. 



Fig. 492. 



Longitudinal section of 



flower (f ). 



' Desf., Mem. Mus., v. 37, t. 2. — DC, Prodr., ii. 

 n. 12. — Macrostigma, Hook., Icon., t. 412. 



-Knul., Gen., n. G417.— R. H., Oen., G09, 



