2U NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



antlicsis, tliat is at tlie moment of the detachment of a sort of 

 conical roof or cap wliich covered it in the bud (fig. 300), we shall 

 see the male organs, of very variable form, rising up and spreading 

 to throw off this operculum, under which they had been bent up and 

 very closely imbricated. Following up their spiral from with- 

 out inwards, we find successively as follows : — the fertile stamens, 

 consisting of a filament that becomes more dilated and petaloid as 

 we go further inwards, and an anther with two contiguous cells of 

 longitudinal dehiscence, placed on the inner face of a ribbon-like 

 connective, is prolonged into an apiculus above them ; sterile 

 stamens, or membranous petaloid blades, with the surface quite 

 glabrous, gradually increasing in size ; and finally, other staminodes 

 like thicker, fieshier scales, dotted over with projecting capitate glands, 

 much imbricated, and growing smaller as we approach the gyna^ceum. 

 These glands first appear on the inner face, on which they are always 

 more numerous than on the outer face and the crenulate edges. The 

 whole concavity of the receptacle is filled by the wedge-shaped ovaries,' 

 wliich are crowded together below, and free above, where they terminate 

 internally by a short stylar horn, stigmatiferous at the tip." In the 

 inner angle of each is a placenta bearing a variable number of ascend- 

 ing anatropous ovules in two parallel rows, their raphes a little towards 

 one another.^ The fruit is multiple, consisting of a large number of 

 many-seeded carpels crowded together within the top-shaped cavity 

 of the receptacle, now grown fiesliy, whose rim enframes the styles and 

 projects a little above them ; the traces of these last are still found on 

 a sort of circular nearly horizontal platform, formed by the upper 

 surfaces of the individual fruits. The seed contains ruminate albumen 

 and a small embryo near its apex. As yet only two species of this 

 genus are known, Australian shrubs with alternate exstipulate leaves.* 



' Tliuy, tou, are airauged in a spiral whose areolse as there are carpels." Now there is no 



turns are close together. A little more than welding of the styles ; the free stigmas are equal 



half way up the back of each is an angular pro- in number to the carpels, and the areola; in 



jection, a little bump which fits exactly into question certainly represent those portions of the 



the interval between two of the carpels outside backs of the ovaries that are above the external 



of it. The carpels thus mo\ilded on one another projections of which we have spoken. 



do not, however, colierc, but are only compressed •' Later on the ovules are displaced, so that 



and crowded together. one of them is as it were enframed in a ring by 



- This tip is a sort of little papillose button, that the others. In E. Bennettii, there are from 



has nothing iu common with what most authors three to six ovules in each vow. They have two 



have described as the stigma, for they say that coats, and the top of the secundine is flask- 



" tlie styles are welded together into a mass, shaped, and projects through the exostome. 



terminated by a flat stigma pitted by as many ■" Benth., Fl. Austral., i. 53. 



