LAURACE.V. 



435 



dioecious or polygamous. The fruit is a berry, resting on the more or 

 less decided concavity of a cupuliform receptacle with truncate edges, 

 which never envelopes it to more than a third of its height (fig. 250). 

 The seed is fleshy, and its embryo is exalbuminous. Ocofea belongs 

 to the tropical and subtropical regions of America, excepting some 

 species from Africa and the Canary Islands. Their leaves are 

 opposite, usually thick, coriaceous, and penniveined. The flowers 

 are small and numerous, collected into ramified racemes of cymes in 

 the axils of the leaves or at the ends of the branches. About a 

 hundred and fifty species of this genus 1 are known. 



Nectandra leucantlm. 



Nectandra Puclmry major. 



Fig. 251. 

 Stamen (f). 



Fio. 252. 

 Part of the embryo. 



Next to Ocofea come several genera only differing in the details 

 of the behaviour of the pedicels, receptacle, and perianth after an- 

 thesis : Strycknodaphne, Camphoromcea, and Gymnobalanus. 



Nectandra (figs. 251-252), with the same floral organization, is at 

 once distinguished by the thickness of the expanded, almost fleshy 

 perianth, and the singular form of the stamens, whose four cells are 

 placed in a nearly horizontal or curved row (fig. 251). PleurotJiyrium 

 and Dicypellium (of which the fertile androceum is still unknown) 

 appear to differ from Nectandra in only secondary characters. 



Synandrodaphne may be considered as Ocofea with the stamens 

 coherent at the base. SympJiysodaphne has also a monadelphous an- 

 droceum, as in Acrodiclidium and Misanteca, but there are only three 

 fertile stamens, united into a tube with the anthers at the top. 



Sassafras" (figs. 253-255) has the general organization of Ocofea 



1 Metssn., Prodi-., 112-139; in Mart. Fl. 

 liraa., Laurac, 10.3, t. 7(>-S3 (Orrodajihue). 



2 IUm., Pin,, 431.— Ray, Hist., 1568.— 



Nees, St/st., 487.— Enm., Gen., n. 2056.— 

 Meissn., Prodr., 170, 513. — Evosmus Xrrr., 

 Gen. Amer., i. 259. 



r F 2 



