172 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Apeiba Tibourbou. 



Fig. 185. 

 Fruit (i). 



have been described, probably only contains from eight to ten at the 

 most, all natives of the north temperate regions of the two Worlds. 



Beside the Limes is placed Schoutenia and 

 Muntingia, which also have indehiscent fruits. 

 In the former it is dry and monospermous, 

 but the calyx is accrescent round it, and form- 

 ing at the base a kind of large membranous 

 reticulate involucre. In the latter the peri- 

 carp surrounds numerous seeds, but it is 

 fleshy. Glyphtea has also a dry fruit, inde- 

 hiscent or nearly so, elongated and polysper- 

 mous ; the ovary is divided into a variable 

 number of cells : there may be as many as ten. 

 It is the same in Apeiba; as many as thirty cells have been 

 counted in the indehiscent fruit (fig. 185); but it is circular, de- 

 pressed, muricate, or covered with prickles or hairs. In Ancistro- 

 carpus the tetramerous flower has an ovary with six incomplete cells, 

 a 5-adelphous androceum, a coriaceous globular fruit covered with 

 hooked prickles (indehiscent?). In Luhea the fruit is capsular, 

 dehiscent, with winged seeds, but the exterior stamens are sterile, 

 and the flower is surrounded by a variable number of bracts forming 

 an epicalyx. Gr (effect has also an epicalyx formed only of three val- 

 vate leaves, two multiovulate cells in the ovary, and the stamens all 

 fertile. In Mottia the epicalyx disappears, the stamens are united for 

 a great distance into ten bundles, superposed five to the sepals and 

 five to the petals, while the capsular fruit remains two-celled. Spar- 

 mannia (figs. 186-190) and Entelea generally have tetramerous 

 flowers. In the former the exterior stamens are sterile, .undulate- 

 glandular or moniliform, and the fruit is an almost globose capsule 

 with 4-8 cells, all outwardly bristling with prickles. Entelea (fig. 191) 

 has nearly the same flowers and fruit, but all its stamens are fertile. 

 Honckenya has a small number of interior fertile stamens, the 

 others being reduced to slender filaments. The fruit is an elongated, 

 echinate, loculicidal capsule, the valves, from four to eight in number, 



DtriiAM., Arbr., i. t. 50-52. — Waldst. & Kit., 

 PL liar. Jlunj., t. 3.— Venten., Monogr. Til., 

 Paris (1802), in-4.— Spach, Rev. Gen. Til., in 

 Ann. Sc. Nat., ser. 2, iii. 331, t. 15. — Geen. 



& Gode., Fl. de Fr., i. 285.— A. Geat, Man., 

 ed. 5, 103.— C. Koch, Bot. W. Schr. (1865), 

 2G7, 277.— Waif., Hep., i. 357 ; ii. 799; Ann., 

 vii. 449. 





