38 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Seguieria jloribunda. 



a species of un symmetrical plate or tuft, whose border is stigmatiferous 

 to a variable extent and which persists, growing and hardening, to 

 the apex of the fruit, which is dry and indehiscent and becomes in 

 that way a samara. Its hollow part is covered with ribs or short 

 wings, very irregular, and containing an ascending seed enclosing a 



large embryo. This has a short inferior 

 radicle and much developed foliaceous 

 cotyledons, many times folded and 

 crumpled. In the interval of their 

 folds, towards the centre, a very small 

 remnant of soft and viscous albumen is 

 seen. From Seguieria has been gene- 

 ricaliy separated a Brazilian species 

 Gallesia Gorazema? because its flowers 

 are oftener in four than in five parts, 

 and because of slight differences in the 

 shape of the wing which surmounts its 

 fruit, and in the rather more con- 

 siderable quantity of the albumen which 

 persists between the folds of the embryo ; but we only consider it as 

 a section of the same genus. In joining this species to that of the 

 section Euseguieria which is found in Brazil, Gruiana, and Columbia, 2 

 a total is obtained of some ten 3 trees or shrubs, with alternate, entire, 

 glabrous and petiolate leaves, accompanied by two stipules, some- 

 times indurated or developed in hooks. The flowers are in racemes 

 or in much ramified compound spikes ; each placed in the axil of a 

 bract, and accompanied by two lateral bractlets. 



In Adenogramma* (figs. 58-62) the flowers are hermaphrodite and 

 analogous to those of the preceding genera, for they have also five 

 sepals, quincuncially imbricated, five stamens with introrse anthers 

 and filaments free, or united at the base for a very short distance, 



Fig. 56. 



Fruit. 



Fig. 57. 

 Fruit open. 



1 Moq., Prodr.,8. — G. scorodendrum Casae., 

 Nov. Stirp. Bras. Dec, v. 43. — Endl., Gen., 

 n. 5254 1 . — Cratceva Gorazema Velloz., Fl. 

 Flum., v. t. 4. 



• Lotjreiro has described besides (Fl. Co- 

 chinch., 311), under the name of S. asiatieus, a 

 doubtful species of this genus, whose fruit appears 

 to be a bivalve (?) and surmounted by a multifid 

 wing with linear divisions (?). 



3 Benth., in Trans. Linn. Soc, xviii. 234; in 

 Rook. Joum. (1847), 482 (Gallesia). 



4 Reichb., Icon. Fxot., ii. 3, t. 109. — 

 Fenzl, in Ann. Wien. Mus., ii. 254. — 

 Exdl., Gen., n. 5195.— B. H., Gen., 144, 156, 

 858, n. 19. — Steudelja Peesl, Si/mb., 1, 3, 

 t. 2. 



