138 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



corapanied by two pretty large lateral bractlets, which are connate 

 in form, a sort of two-lipped sac below the flower. 



Most of the Cpwmetras, 1 too, are easy to define when we know 

 Copaifera : they are Copaivas with five imbricate petals. However, 

 all the species are not exactly alike. In some the floral receptacle is 

 slightly concave, giving a perigynous insertion to the sepals. These 

 are pretty often five in number, the two posterior remaining separate. 

 The androceum has sometimes more than five pieces, owing to the 

 deduplication of some of them ;' 2 and the filaments, instead of being 

 wholly free, are sometimes slightly monadelphous at the base. The 

 ovary contains one or two ovules, descending and anatropous, with 

 the micropyles superior and exterior. The fruit is thick, short and 

 straight, or bowed and reniform, often wrinkled or warty ; it contains 

 a large descending seed, whose coats inclose a fleshy exalbuminous 

 embryo, with its superior radicle enveloped by the auricled bases of 

 the cotyledons. Cynometra comprises some twenty specimens of un- 

 armed trees from most tropical countries. 3 Their leaves are alternate 

 paripinnate, with one or more pairs of unsymmetrical leaflets and 

 with caducous stipules. The flowers are grouped in short racemes, 

 often corymbose or subumbellate, inserted in the axils of the leaves 

 or on the wood of the branches or trunk. Each flower, often 

 accompanied by two coloured bractlets, is axillary to a bract, and at 

 the bottom of the inflorescence these bracts are greatly developed, 

 together forming a caducous involucre. There are often also two 

 coloured bractlets. 



The small flowers of Plcfogyne* have also five petals and five sepals. 

 They are inserted round the rim of a little circular disk, and are 

 imbricated 5 in the bud. The ten stamens are free and similarly 

 inserted ; they have introrse two-celled anthers of longitudinal dehis- 



1 L., Gen., n. 519.— J., Gen., 350.— Lamk., Hi nth., in Hook. Journ., ii. 99; in Trans. 

 Dic(.,u. 210, t. 331.— GiEKTN., Fruct., ii. 350, Linn. Soc, x.w. 318. — Hook. P., Niger, 328. 

 t. 156.— DC, Prodr., ii. 509.— Spach, Suit, a —A. Rich., /'/. Cub., 232, t. 41.— Til., in 

 Buffon, i. 111.— Endi., Gen., n. 6784.— B. H., Arch. Mvs., iv. 178. — \. Gbay, Bot. Cut. 

 Gen., 586, n. 367.— Metrocyiiia Dtjp.-Th., Slates Expl. Exp ., t. 52. — Wai P., Sep., i. 853 ; 

 Gen.Nov.Madag., 12.— DC, op.clf.. ii. 507.— v. 573; Ann., ii. 419; iv. 601.— OxiV., Fl. 

 E>'dl., Gen., n. 67t 3. — Cynomorium Rumph., Trap. Afr., ii. 316. 



Serb. Amboin., i. 163, t. 62 (nee Mich.). * Til., in Ann, Sc. Nat., ser. 2, xx. 140; 



2 Sometimes, too, there are ten stamens, which in A,,h. JJus., iv. 130. — B. H., Gen., 5SG, 

 are not however all fertile, some of the posterior n. 366. 



being reduced to filaments. s Usually t j ie tw0 lateral petals overlap, and 



3 Boxb., PI. Command,, iii. 286.— Hayite, the anterior and posterior are overlapped, on 

 Arzn., xi. t. 17 (Tiacftylobiiun Martianum). — either ed"-e. 



