10.2 Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermacea. 



six petals, also 2-serial, smaller than the inner sepals, rounded, 

 extremely fleshy, the edges folded inwards so as to embrace and 

 almost conceal a stamen fixed on its claw; each filament bears 

 two small anther-cells half imbedded in its substance. A single 

 sterile ovary is sometimes seen in the centre of the male flower, 

 being columnar, somewhat ventricose, and terminated by a 

 fungiform stigma: this I found of usual occurrence in the 

 typical species, but I have not met with it in the few flowers 

 examined of other species. In the female flowers, the petals 

 are divaricated, less fleshy ; and the six sterile shorter stamens 

 stand erect and free round three gibbous ovaria, supported on a 

 short gynsecium. In the typical species, the fruit is gibbously 

 oval and somewhat compressed, about an inch long, having its 

 stipitate enlargement near the middle of the ventral side, at 

 some drstance from the persistent stigma : it is covered by a 

 coriaceous indehiscent husk, of a yellowish colour, that becomes 

 dark in drying; between this and the piitamen is a yellowish 

 mesocarp, having the consistence of an arillus, and apparently 

 formed of rounded masses aggregated together, corresponding 

 in size to the large areoles indicated by the grooved lines on the 

 surface of the putamen : it dries into a horny substance insoluble 

 in water or alcohol. In the Guiana species, the fruit is cylin- 

 drically oblong, with a laterally basal suppqrt, and with the 

 remains of the stigma in its apex, the putamen being quite 

 cylindrical, and the embryo straight. The peculiar structure of 

 the putamen and seed has been already noticed in the diagnosis 

 of the tribe Anomospermea : one of its chief peculiarities consists 

 in the form of its condyle, which is a laminiform and longitu- 

 dinal osseous plate, projecting from the ventral face of the 

 putamen to near the centre of the cell, and upon which the seed 

 is folded and attached ; several other short transverse plates 

 project across the dorsal face of the cell, which penetrate into 

 the sinuosities of the albumen, after the manner of many Ano- 

 naceee; these, however, are only adventitious processes. The 

 lamellarly ruminated structure of the albumen much resembles 

 that of Tiliacora, and the embryo, either straight or uncinately 

 curved, is equally elongated and slender; but the radicle is 

 relatively much shorter, and the cotyledons are accumbent in 

 the one, and incumbent in the other. 



Mr. Bentham, in his ' Notes on Menispermacea' in accordance 

 with the system he has so extensively adopted, considers all the 

 plants of this genus reducible to a single species. It is impos- 

 sible to concur in this opinion, which is absolutely incompatible 

 with the facts here registered. 



Anomospermum, nob. — Flores dioici vel rarius polygami. 



