LEGUMIN0S2E-C2ESALPINIE31. 141 



petalous corolla, a diplostemonous androceum, and a free gynseceum. 

 The calyx is divided to a variable depth into five lubes, valvate in 

 the bud. 1 The corolla, regular, or nearly so, is so imbricated, that 

 the vexillary petal is overlapped on either edge. The stamens are 

 subhypogynous and of two kinds. Those superposed to the petals 

 are fertile, each formed of a free filament and an introrse two-celled 

 anther dehiscing by two longitudinal clefts. 2 Those alternating 

 with the petals are on the contrary sterile, consisting of an obpyra- 

 midal body, 3 or else a long slender staminode with a club-shaped 

 head. The central gynseceum consists of a sessile or shortly stipitate 

 pluriovulate ovary, 4 tapering above, to form a very short or almost 

 obsolete style, whose scarcely dilated apex is covered with stigmatic 

 papillae. The fruit is a flattened elongated pod with a thick woody 

 endocarp, and divided by slightly projecting false dissepiments into 

 as many chambers as there are seeds. 5 The endocarp separates into 

 two flat elastic valves which then turn back, while the exocarp 

 remains adherent in some species, 6 but separates altogether from 

 them in others. 7 Within the membranous seed-coats is a greenish 

 embryo surrounded by fleshy albumen. 8 Dimorphandra consists of 

 some half-score species 9 of unarmed trees from tropical America. 

 The leaves are alternate, pinnate 10 or more frequently bipinnate, with 

 ill-developed lateral stipules at the base. The flowers, each axillary 

 to a little caducous bract, are small and numerous, in simple or 

 ramified racemes, or spikes terminating the brandies. 



In Burkea, n from tropical and southern Africa, the subperigynous 



1 The short thick lobes of the calyx often cease slender above, and dilate at the summit into a 

 touching at a very early age, but in some species, little more or less oblique club-shaped head, often 

 like _D. mollis, where they are longer, they are slightly concave or cupuliform above. 



at first slightly imbricated. 4 The ovules are descending, with the micro- 



2 The filament is commonly attached by its pyles superior and exterior. 



very fine apex to an elongated, thick coriaceous ° The fruit is one-seeded, it is said, in D. 



connective, usually dark-coloured. The two guianensis (D. Mora Benth.; — Mara guianen- 



linear cells occupy but a very narrow space on sis Sceomb.). 

 either side of the connective. G E.g., D. (Poci/lion) veniicosa Sprcce. 



3 In this case the tops of the five staminodes ' Such as D. mollis Bentu., in Hook. Journ., 

 cohere into a sort of five-pillared vault. Only ii. 102. 



the filaments of the fertile anthers are to be 8 The albumen is perhaps wanting in certain 

 seen in the interspaces between the pillars, the species, as Bentham gives the absence of peri- 

 anthers bein"- mainly lodged in the elongated sperms as a characteristic of the genus, 

 pits on the inner faces of the staminodes. This 9 Walp., Rep., 57 1. 



is the case with the species of which Tulasm: 10 In the species properly belonging to Mora 



(Arch. Mus., iv. 1S6) has made his section Po- Scncnns., loc. cit. 



cilhm. [n the other sections of the genus (Eudi- n Hook., Icon., t. 593. — Rndl., Got., n. 



morphandra Tttl., loc. cit., 183; Phaneropsia 07G7 1 . — B. II., Gen., 587, n. 3t!D. 

 Tul., loc. cit., 188) the staminodes are more 



