144 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS I BOTANY. 



Class II. GNETACE^E. Joint-firs. 



Stems simple or branched, often jointed, with ducts in the wood, but 

 not resinous. Leaves opposite, simple, often reduced to scales. Flowers 

 with a small, 2-4-merous perianth. Seeds in the Patagonian forms fleshy, 

 like small grapes. 



Family 4. EPHEDRACE.E. 



Characters of the genus, viz : 



EPHEDRA Linn. Joint-firs, Sea-grapes. 



Leafless shrubs, with many branches jointed at the nodes, longitudinally 

 grooved like Equisetum, the branches opposite or fascicled and sub- 

 FlG 2g tended by pairs of leaf-scales which repre- 



sent the reduced leaves. Flowers mostly dioe- 

 cious, the male flowers in compound inflores- 

 cences, each with a 2-leaved perianth, and bearing 

 2-8 anthers on a common axis. The female 

 flowers having a tubular perianth contracted 

 above, around one erect ovule, whose integument 

 emerges as a tube-like micropyle ; in spikelets of 

 2-8. Fruit berry-like from red fleshy bracts. 

 (Fig. 28.) 



nana. Branch, nat- Species 30, over the Mediterranean region 

 urai size; female and male flowers, (Tyrol to North Africa) the Himalayas, Altai, 



Orient, mountains of America, from California by 

 Texas to Chili, Argentina, and North and South Patagonia. 



Sometimes the fruit is used medicinally and as food. "At Pingo- 

 pingo in Atacama the mules eat the branchlets of E. andina (Poepp.) 

 and men eat the fruit sc. the red fleshy bracts which are insipid." (R. 

 Philippi.) 



(i) Monoecious. 



i. E. AMERICANA Humb. & Bonpl. 



Much branching, the branches fasciculate, terete, striate, with bifid sheaths 

 in the young branches ending in subulate leaves. Male catkins 1-2, 

 sessile at the joints ; anthers 4-7, sessile, making a globose head on a 



