476 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Chloranthus inconspicuus. 





Fig. 519. 

 Diagram. 



considered as partly inferior, since it bears somewhere about half- 

 way up the more or less prominent rim of the receptacular cup in 

 which it is enframed. Here are inserted the perigynous male 

 organs ; they consist of a thick fleshy scale, concave towards the 

 ovary. The median lobe bears the two cells of an introrse anther, 



each dehiscing by a longitudinal cleft, sur- 

 mounted by a more or less marked prolongation 

 of the connective. The anther borne on each 

 of the lateral lobes is reduced to a single cell 

 (fig. 518), also introrse and surmounted by an 

 apiculus. It is still a moot point whether 

 these flowers are hermaphrodite with a uni- 

 lateral androceum, or really unisexual, in which 

 case the three stamens would form a little 

 cyme or glomerulus of monandrous flowers, placed on one side of a 

 terminal female flower reduced to its gynaBceum. 1 The fruit is a 

 drupe with a thin fragile stone, and bears about half-way up a 

 vestige of the rim that encircled the ovary in the flower. The seed 

 is descending and orthotropous ; it contains within its coats a 

 copious farinaceous albumen, and near its apex a little embryo, with 

 a short inferior radicle, and small thick more or less divaricated 

 cotyledons. 



In certain species of Cliloranthus the stem is frutescent, or sar- 

 mentose and almost climbing. The best known of these species that 

 are woody (at least at the base) is C. inconspicuus? an inhabitant of 

 South-east Asia, often cultivated in our conservatories. Other 

 species have creeping subterranean rhizomes, which give off herb- 

 aceous aerial branches. They are aromatic plants, from China and 

 Japan. Among the Japanese species two are remarkable for the 

 enormous elongation of the connective above the anther, to form a 



1 C. J. de Coedemoy (he. cit., 288) considers 

 "the flowers of Chloranthus as a true inflorescence, 

 in which the axis bears at its extremity a single 

 female flower, composed merely of a naked ovary, 

 and laterally in the axil of a bract a little glomer- 

 ulus (biparous sessile cyme) of male flowers, 

 represented one by a bilocular stamen, and the 

 others by unilocular stamens." De Soims ascribes 

 hermaphrodite flowers to Chloranthus, a view in 



which we thoroughly coincide (Adansonia, x. 

 143). 



2 Sw., in Phil. Trans., loc.cit.,t. 15. — Liieb., 

 Sert. Angl., t. 2. — C. J. de Cordem., loc. cit., 

 295. — De Solms, Prodr., 474, n. 2. — ? C. oltusi- 

 folius ~Miq.,FLInd.-£at.,802. — Creodus odorifer 

 Lour. — Nigrina spicata Thunb. (? ?). — N. spi- 

 cifera Lajik., III., t. 71. 



