154 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Apophyllum anomalum. 



covered with scaly hairs, like those of Elaagnacece. Its flowers, 

 externally like those of a small Camparis, are solitary in the axils of 

 the upper leaves, with four sepals, two external, large and valvate, 

 two internal, alternating with the former, small, and tongue-like. 

 Behind a pit whose edges are prolonged into three glandular teeth, 

 the receptacle rises into an arched column, on whose expanded 

 capital are inserted the sexual organs. There are six fertile stamens, 

 two posterior, two lateral, and two anterior ; and three sterile ones, 

 reduced to slender filaments, alternating with the anterior pair. 

 The gy nseceum is of Capparis, borne on a slender foot and contain- 

 ing two pluriovulate placentas. The fruits and seeds are nearly as 

 in Capparis. 



Apophyllum anomalum 1 is a frutescent plant from Tropical 



Australia, whose flowers (fig. 180), formed 

 on the whole as in Capparis, are, however, 

 so reduced as to be polygamous, with a 

 corolla of sometimes only three or four petals, 

 and only one or two stamens in the herma- 

 phrodite flowers ; while there are none in 

 the females. At the same time, the ovary, 

 which has a large lateral gland at the base 

 of its foot, contains but one or two ovules, 

 usually ascending. The fruit is small, 

 globular, and one-seeded. The embryo is 

 slender, and rolled repeatedly on itself. This 

 shrub is branching, almost leafless. Its flowers form little axillary 

 or lateral bunches. 



In Roydsiar the small flowers have a gamosepalous calyx with six 

 deep imbricated lobes, and very numerous stamens supported on a 

 short foot with the ovary of three multiovulate cells. The fruit is 

 a large one-seeded drupe ; the embryo has two fleshy unequal coty- 

 ledons, the smaller of which is induplicate, enfolded by its fellow. 

 Boydsia consists of shrubs with obtuse simple leaves, and flowers in 

 simple or ramified racemes. Two species are known : 3 one from the 



Fig. 180. 



Long. sect, of flower (f-). 



1 F. Mttell., in Hook. Journ., ix. 306. — 2 Roxb., PI. Corom., iii. 86, t. 289. — Endl., 



Benth., Fl. Austral., i. 97.— B. H., Gen., 109, Gen., n. 5009.— B. H., Gen., 110, n. 20. 

 n. 18. 3 Walp., Rep , i. 202. 



