E08AGE2E. 413 



slightly ascending. No opportunity has as yet occurred for examining 

 the fruit of either of the two known species ; these are branching 

 trees from the west of tropical Africa, glabrous or with silky down, 

 and possessing opposite or alternate shortly petiolate simple coriaceous 

 leaves. The flowers are on slender pedicels, and are grouped in 

 simple or compound pseudo-corymbs on the wood of the branches 

 or in the axils of the leaves. 



The flowers of Nicttallici' are also in general organization those of 

 Prunus," and are polygamo-dioecious. In the female flowers, there 

 are as many carpels as petals. The broad short receptacular tube 

 lined by a layer of glandular tissue, comes ofl" after fertilization in 

 a circular piece, just as in RapJiiolepis, bringing with it the perianth 

 which is inserted on its edges, and which consists of five quincuncial 

 sepals and as many alternate shortly unguiculate imbricated petals. 

 We find fifteen stamens analogous to those oi Prunus, and arranged in 

 two whorls ;^ each possesses a free filament inflexed in the bud, and 

 an introrse two-celled anther. This anther is sterile in the female 

 flowers, in which the three, four, or five oppositipetalous carpels are 

 inserted in the bottom of the receptacle. Each consists of an ovary 

 with a contracted base surmounted by a style which articulates with 

 it, and is dilated at the tip into a stigmatiferous head. In the 

 ventral angle of the ovary is a placenta bearing two collateral 

 descending ovules, whose micropyles are superior and exterior, and 

 are capped by thick obturators. The fruit consists of one or more 

 drupes, with coriaceous one-seeded endocarps. The descending seed 

 contains within its membranous coats a little sheet of albumen. Only 

 one species^ of Nuttallia is known, a small tree from North America'^ 

 with alternate caducous simple entire petiolate*' exstipulate leaves. 

 Its flowers are in pendulous racemes,^ at first enveloped with the young- 

 branches in scaly buds. 



' ToBB. &Gr., Fl. N.Amer.,\.4!\2. — Hook., placed oue on either side of each, so tliat there 



Bot. Beech. Voy., Suppl., 336, t. 82. — Endl., are no stamens sviperposed to the sepals ; and 



Q-en., n. 6394. — B. H., Qen., 611, n. 17. according to his view of the androceum in 



^ They are also, as we have said (p. 389, note Ronaceee, this plant has conipovnid stamens, 



2), altogether the same externally as those of without any confluence of their lohes. 



Exochorda, which possesses a totally different ■* N. cerasiformis ToRK. & Or., loc. cif. — 



fruit. The foliage is pretty similar in the two Walp., Eep., v. 659. 



genera. '' " -A grad. bor. 35° ad 50° vigens." 



^ A. Dickson (Journ. of Bot., iv. (1806), t. " They are said to smell like prussic acid, 



lii. fig. 4) has observed that of the fifteen stamens '^ Each flower, axillary to a Ijnu-t, is acconi- 



of N. cerasiformis five are in front of r.he median panicd by two lateral bractlets, placed at ;i variable 



lines of the petals, with ten larger than theso, height on its pedicel. 



