MAGN0LIACE2E. 157 



This is short, thick, and terminal, articulated at the summit of the 

 branch. As yet but one species of this genus is known' — a small 

 tree from the mountains of New Caledonia, Its leaves are alternate, 

 petiolate, exstipulate ; analogous to those of a MacjnoJla with per- 

 sistent foliage. 



IV. EUPTELEA SERIES. 



The genus Euptelea- has been recently referred by Hooker & 

 Thomson'' to the order Magnoliacece, of which its polygamous flowers 

 wanting the perianth present a much reduced type. In those 

 which are hermaphrodite, the somewhat dilated summit of the recep- 

 tacle' bears a variable number of stipitate free carpels, and around 

 them are also an indefinite number of hypogynous stamens. Each 

 of these consists of a slender filament and a basifixed linear anther, 

 with two adnate cells dehiscing by lateral marginal clefts, and sur- 

 mounted by an apicnlate prolongation of the connective. Each 

 carpel consists of a one-celled ovary supported on a slender foot, and 

 surmounted by a sort of sessile crest covered with stigmatic papilla?, 

 and descending along the inner edge of the carpel nearly to the 

 point where the ovules are attached.^ These are inserted on the 

 internal angle of the cell on a parietal placenta which usually bears 

 a single descending ovule, with its micropyle outwards and down- 

 wards in E. poJyandra Sieb. and Zucc.,'' a Japanese species ; while a 

 second observed in India, B. Griffithii Hook. F. & Thoms.,^ possesses 

 as many as three or four descending or slightly ascending ovules in 

 each carpel. The male flowers contain only little sterile carpels.^ 

 The fruit consists of a variable number of stipitate samaras, each 



cular origin like the calyx of Drimys, or whether pears to be of wholly axial nature. The study of 



it arises later by a sort of annular hypertrophy organogeny will alone show whether it is dc- 



of the calyx, closely analogous in form to that veloped like a disc, 

 seen around the true calyx of Eschscholtzia. ^ " Stigmata sessilia, linearia, a veriice car- 



' Z. Vleillardi H. Bn., loc. cit., t. iv. pellorum usque ad ovidorum insertionem intror- 



^ SlEB. & Zucc, Fl. Jap., i. 133. — Endl., sum decurrenlia." (IJ. U., loc. cit.) 

 Gen., n. 1850' (Suppl. ii. 29).— MiQ., Ann. ^ 0^. cjf. 134., t. 72. 



Mus. Lugd. Bat., iii. G6. ' Loc. cit., t. 2. 



^ Journ. Linn. Soc, vii. 240. — B. H., Oen., ^ The ovary, however, contains a single ovule 



954. in the Japanese species, but it reni:iins sterile. 



■* This summit often produces a small irregular Siebolu & ZucCAKini sny that there are fenmlo 



circular ring around the stamens ; but this ap- flowers without any rudiments of male organs (?). 



