54 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Thus constituted' the genus CJemcdis includes wood}^ usually 

 climbing plants, rarely suff'rutescent or herbaceous, with the leaves 

 always opposite and exstipulate, simple or compound, ternate or 

 pinnate, the petiole of variable length and sometimes twining.- In 

 Naravelia it bears two leaflets, and is then prolonged into a tendril 

 which supports the branches. We shall see later on that the 

 structure of these and of the stem presents very peculiar characters. 

 The flowers may be terminal or axillary, solitary as in C. Viticella 

 L., or, as in C. Vitalha L., in cjnnes which are themselves united 

 into a raceme with opposite ramifications. In certain species with 

 precocious flowering (as C, montana Benth.) the flowers are axillary, 

 not to the leaves themselves, but to the bracts which represent them 

 in the lower part of the bud ; above the flowers the branch afterwards 

 bears true leaves, with leaf-buds axillary to them. This genus 

 includes about a hundred genera, inhabitants of all the temperate 

 regions of both hemispheres, or even of the warmest countries, as 

 South America,^ the borders of the Indian ocean, Eastern Asia,'' 

 Australia,^ and as far south as New Zealand" and Tasmania.^ 



Thalictrunf is easy to characterize when we know Clematis ; it is 

 Clematis, but with an imbricate sestivation and alternate leaves. If 

 we examine, for example, T. aquilegifolium L. (figs. 97, 98), we see 

 that the flower is hermaphrodite, and that the pedicel, a little swollen 

 above, is continued into a conical depressed receptacle which bears 

 the coloured perianth, the androceum and the gynseceum, one after 

 another. The calyx is formed of four^ decussate free sepals of 

 alternative-imbricate sestivation.'" These leaves have an articula- 

 tion as it were at the base, and fall early from the receptacle. The 



* (1. Atraijene {L.). * "Rox^vnan, PI. Coromand., 1. 188. — Hook. 



2. Naravelia (L.). & Thoms., Fl. Ind., i. 4. — SiEB. & Zucc, Fl. 



3. Cheiropsis (DC). Jap. Fam., 68. 

 Clematis. } 4. Meclatis (Spacu). » Benth. & F. Muell., Fl. Austral., i. 1. 



Sections?. 



5. Tiorna (Pees.). — Muralta ^ Hook. F., FL N. Zealand, 6. 



(Adans., ex Endl.). 7 Hook. F., Fl. Tasman., 2. 



6. nticella (Mcench). 8 Thalictnm T., Inst., 270, t. 143 ; Cor., 



1 7. Flammula (DC). 20.— L., G^eji., n. 697.— Juss., Gen. 232.— DC, 



Vaharia is a genus admitted by Sekinge Prodr., i. 11. — Spach, Suit, a Buff., vii. 237. — 



{op. cit., iii. 93) for Clematis integrifolia, Endl., Oen., n. 4772. — Payee, Organog., 253, 



ochroleuca, and ovata. t. Iviii. — B. H., Gen., 4, n. 3. — H. Bn., Adan- 



• It has been noticed that the petioles may sonia, iv. 54. 



twine in cither direction ; and that in the species " There are flowers with five sepals imbricated 



with persistent leaves the tendrils formed by (sometimes quincuncially), or more rarely with 



their petioles persist also. six, seven, and upwards. 



' A. S. H., Fl. Bras, mer., i. 1. — Maet., Fl. '" The imbrication may be difl"erent even with 



Bras., Ranunc., 146. four sepals. 



