312 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



ovary, which thus becomes two- or four-celled. The ovules are 

 numerous, small and anatropous. 1 The fruit is dry and capsular, 

 often submembranous, surmounted by the teeth of the calyx and the 

 two or four withered styles ; between these it opens at the apex to 

 free the numerous seeds. The outer seed-coat is often prolonged 

 into a reticulate membranous sac; the thin fleshy albumen contains 

 in its axis a cylindrical embryo with very short cotyledons. Some 

 thirty species of this genus are known, 2 inhabitants of the temperate 

 parts of North and South America, East and Central Asia, and Java. 

 They are trees or shrubs, sometimes sarmentose, with opposite petio- 

 late exstipulate leaves, persistent or caducous. The inflorescences are 

 terminal, with caducous bracts at the base. They look like corymbs, 

 but are really short ramified racemes of C3^mes, which often become 

 uniparous peripherally, towards the sterile flowers with the large 

 petaloid calyx (fig. 393). 



A Japanese Hydrangea has been described as a distinct species 

 under the name of Schizopliragma ; 3 its styles, instead of being free all 

 along or for some distance, are united into a single column, right up 

 to the four- or five-lobed stigmatiferous end. This character appears 

 to us of only sectional value. 



PI at j crater* has the characters of Hydrangea with numerous 

 stamens, and is to that genus what Philadelphus is to Deutzia. 

 The flowers may be tetramerous or pentamerous ; but the carpels, 

 with the styles and parietal placentas, are usually two or more rarely 

 three in number. The latter number is found in Cardiandra? which 

 is generically inseparable from Platycrater, though possessing alter, 

 nate leaves. The two known species 5 of this genus are Japanese 

 shrubs, with the habit, inflorescence, and external sterile flowers 

 of Hydrangea. 



Pileostegia 1 has tetramerous flowers, very near those of some Ilyd- 



1 They have two coats. 3 Sieb. & Zucc, Fl. Jap., 58, t. 26. — Endl. 



■- Duham., Arbr., ed. uov. iii. t. 24. — Wall., Gen., n. 4670. — B. H., Gen., 641, n. 23 — 



Tent. Fl. Nepal, t. 49, 50.— Cubt., in Syll. Walp., Rep., v. 836. 



PI., ii. 38.— Sieb. & Zucc, Fl. Jap., t. 51-64, * Sieb. & Zucc, Fl. Jap., 62, t. 27. Exdl., 



92.— Pcepp. & Endl., Nov. Gen. et Spec., i. 10, Gen., n. 4669. — B. H., Gen., 642, n. 30. 



1. 17 (Comidia). — Hook. f. & Thoms., in Journ. b Sieb. & Zucc, op. tit., 119, t. 65, 66. 



Linn. Soc, ii. 75. — A. Geay, Man., ed. 2, 146. — Endl., Gen., n. 4668 l . — B. H., Gen., 643, n. 31. 



Chapm., Fl. S. Unit. States, 155. — Bol. Mag. G Walp., Sep., v. 835, 836. 



t. 137, 975. 4253, 5038.— Walp., Rep., ii. 375 * Hook. p. & Thoms., in Jouni. Linn Soc, 



377 (Conuriia); Ann., ii. 689; vii. 902. ii. 57, 76, t. 2.— B. H., Gen., 641, n. 21. ' 



