288 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Byrsanthus Brotvnii. 



capsule opening at the summit into as many panels as there are 

 carpels and styles, that is to say, four or five. The seeds mostly 



abort, except one, which fills almost 

 the whole of the fruit, and contains 

 under its coats a fleshy albumen, en- 

 veloping a conical superior radicle with 

 large foliaceous cotyledons. The leaves 

 are alternate, stipulate, and the articu- 

 late flowers are disposed like those of 

 Homalium, upon ramified axes ; but their 

 pedicels are extremely short. Two 

 species' of Byrsanthus are described, na- 

 tives of tropical Western Africa, trees 

 with simple alternate leaves, and flowers 

 collected in racemes or spikes. 



Fig. 326. 

 Fruit (f). 



VII. PANGIUM SERIES. 



The flowers in this series are dioecious or polygamous. Those of 

 Pangium- (figs. 327-329) have a gamosepalous, valvate calyx un- 

 equally torn at anthesis. More internally the convex receptacle 

 bears from five to eight imbricated petals, each presenting within 

 its base a tolerably flattened scale. The stamens are indefinite in num- 

 ber in the male flower, and each formed of a thick filament, swollen 

 and fleshy, tapering at the apex, which supports an oval two-celled 

 introrse anther, dehiscing by two longitudinal clefts. In the female 

 flower the perianth is the same, and the stamens, few in number, 

 are generally reduced to hypogynous tongues. The gynseceum is 

 composed of a sessile ovary, surmounted by a wide glandular plate 

 stigmatiferous, irregularly divided jnto two, three, or four lobes by 

 shallow furrows. In the interior of the ovary there is but one 

 cavity, with two or three parietal placentas, but little prominent, 

 each supporting a variable number of anatropous ovules, horizontal 



1 Mast., in Oliv. Fl. Prop. Afr., ii. 498. 



2 Rumph., Herb. Amboin., ii. 182, t. 59. — 

 Reinw., in Syllog. PI. Soc. Ratisb., ii. 12. — 

 Hi,., De Nov. Quib. Plant. Fam. Exp. (ex Ann. 

 8c. Nat., sor. 2, ii. 90); Rumph in, iv. 20, t. 



178 j Hus. Lugd.-Bat., i. 14.— Benn., PL Jav. 

 Rar., 205, 20*8, t. 43. — Lindl., Veg. Kingd., 

 323, fig. 223.— B. H., Gen., 129, n. 23.— Lem. & 

 Dcne., Tr. Gen., 427. — Schnizl., Iconogr., t. 

 195 a. 



