168 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



part separates at anthcsis into five teeth or five short lobes, or into 

 a number of more or less deep equal or unequal divisions often fewer 

 in number. Close against the calyx, and alternating with its 

 divisions, are inserted five petals, slightly unsymmetiical, 

 tapering at the base, arranged in the bud in contorted or imbri- 

 cated pnelloration. Above them the receptacle takes the form of a 

 short cylindrical column, upon which the gynceceum is placed. 



Quite against this, that is to say, at a certain 

 Broumlowia data. distance from the corolla, the androceum is in- 

 serted, composed of ten bundles. Five are 

 oppositipetalous, and each represented by a 

 sterile tongue or elongated petaloid staminode, 

 and five others by phalanges of fertile stamens, 

 free or scarcely united among themselves at the 

 base of their filaments, and with short anthers, 

 whose extrorse cells are almost globular, de- 

 hiscing longitudinally by clefts often confluent at 

 Fig. 177. the summit. The gynseceum is superior, formed 



Flower (f). of five or a smaller number of alternipetalous 



carpels. Each of them has a one-celled ovary 

 touching the adjacent ovaries, but not united with them, tapering 

 above into a subulate style with non-swollen stigmatiferous apex. 

 In the internal angle of the ovary the placenta is seen supporting 

 two ascending anatropous ovules with exterior and inferior 1 

 micropyle. The fruit is formed of one, or more rarely of several 

 independent almost globular carpels, with thick woolly bivalved 

 monospermous pericarp. The rounded seed, inserted by a large 

 interior hilum, encloses under its glabrous coats a fleshy embryo, 

 whose thick cotyledons are decurrent below their insertion and form 

 a sort of case round the radicle. Brownlowia consists of beautiful 

 trees of tropical Asia, besprinkled with scaly or stellate hairs. Three 

 species have been described. 2 Then: leaves are alternate, petiolate, 

 simple, penninerved, and 3-5-nerved at the base. The flowers are 

 disposed at the summits of the branches, or in axils of the upper 

 leaves in ramified clusters of cymes. 



1 Tliey have a double coat. Juurn. Linn. Sue, v. Suppl., 56. — Walp., Ann. 



J Wall., in But. Her/., t. 1 172. — Benth., in vii. 442. 



