MAGNOLIACEJE. 



147 



are imbricated in the bud, and fall early from tlie receptacle.' The 

 stamens are also of variable number, usually from six to nine. 



Ulicium parvifloruvi. 



Fig. 191, 

 Floriferous branch. 



Fig. 192. 

 Flower. 



Fig. 193. 

 Longitudinal section of flower. 



Fig. 194. 

 Diagram. 



They appear arranged in a single verticil,- and each consists of a 

 free, thick, fleshy, boat-shaped, obliquely obovate or club-shaped 

 filament, and an introrse anther with two small parallel cells, 

 applied vertically close together towards the summit of the inner 

 face of the filament, and dehiscing longitudinally.^ There are 

 from ten to fifteen carpels also apparently arranged in a circle 

 round the apex of the floral axis which projects in their centre,* 



' still, some of the outermost shorter and 

 greener (calycinal) leaves persist rather longer 

 than the inner ones and the stamens. 



^ The study of organogeny has taught us that 

 they really arise in a spiral order, but very close 

 to one another (Adansonia, vii. 361). 



^ The pollen consists of whitish grains, which 

 become spherical when wetted. The poles of the 

 sphere are connected by three equidistant me- 

 ridional bands, down the centre of each of whicli 

 is a little dark longitudinal streak. In the inter- 

 spaces of these bauds the surface of tlie sphere is 

 punctate, and almost granular. Tlie bands 



are pale and smooth. In an unmoistened pollen- 

 grain the poles are much depressed and approxi- 

 mated. The form of the grain is, as it were, 

 discoidal. The bands of which we have just 

 spoken go from the depressed centre of the disk 

 to the edges, where they end in three indenta- 

 tions, which separate as many projecting blunt 

 festoons. Hy analogy with what is observed in 

 Drimt/s, Schizandra, &c., we should here have 

 to do with a compound pollen-grain made up 

 of three simple ones. (See Comjytes Rendus, Ixvi. 

 700 ; Adansonia, viii. 157.) 



•• This apex of the receptacle projects far more 



l2 



