486 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Aexloxicon pimctatum. 



five stamens 1 alternating with these latter leaves, each consisting of 

 a thick incurved filament and an introrse two-celled basifixed anther 

 of longitudinal dehiscence. Alternating with these stamens are five 

 pairs of thick glands, the glands of each pair approximated" to form a 



crescent with its concavity outwards ; they sur- 

 round a little depression which lodges a short 

 abortive gynasceum. In the female flowers the 

 perianth is nearly the same as in the males, 

 except that the number of its leaves is more 

 variable. The stamens and the glands accom- 

 panying them are arranged as in the male 

 flower, but the former are sterile, having no 

 anther, or only a rudiment at the top of the 

 filament. The gynseceuin here consists of a 

 free ovary, covered with peltate scales and sur- 

 mounted by a narrow style, at first inflexed, and divided above into 

 two little stigmatiferous lobes. In the ovary-cell is seen a parietal 

 placenta, bearing nearly at its top two collateral descending ana- 

 tropous ovules, 3 whose micropyles, capped by their obturators, 4 turn 

 up under the hilum towards the placenta (fig. 297). The fruit is a 

 naked drupe, but its mesocarp is not thick. The seed-coats enclose 

 a fleshy albumen and an embryo with foliaceous cotyledons and a 

 cylindrical superior radicle. Only one species of this genus is 

 known, 5 a Chilian tree, with alternate opposite or subverticillate 

 leaves, simple entire petiolate and exstipulate, and covered like most 

 of the organs with scurfy peltate hairs. The flowers form racemes, 

 simple or more rarely ramified, and solitary or few together in the 

 axils of the leaves. 



Fig. 297. 

 Gynseceum opened (y 2 )• 



Ad anson in 1763 established the family fflaagni; 1 he placed it 

 next to Aristoloc-Macece, and made it comprise not only Elccagnus 

 and Hippop/iae, but several Santalacea, Tupelo (Nyssa), Cynomorium 



1 6 or 7 (Decne.). 



2 There are probably ten glands at first, one 

 on either side of each staininal filament ; but 

 usually the two adjacent ones, touching in the 

 interspace between two stamens, stick or unite 

 together to a variable extent. They are often 

 smaller and more distinct iii the female flowers. 



3 With Lwo coats. 



4 Decaisne has contested the existence of this 

 organ. It is applied to the top of the micro- 



pyle, and receives into a superficial groove on 

 each side near its lower edge an acute bowed 

 rather long prolongation of the nucleus (or 

 perhaps of the embryo-sac), which gives the idea 

 that the obturator plays an important part in 

 fecundation. 



5 2E. punctatum R. & Pat., loc. cit. — C. Gay, 

 Fl. Chi/., v. 348. 



6 Fam. des PL, ii. 77, Fam. xii. 



