392 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



tains one or two seeds whose coats cover a fleshy exalbuminous 

 embryo. 



Coleonema has sometimes tetramerons or hexamerous flowers. It 

 consists of small ericoidal shrubs, natives of tropical Africa. In the 

 four known species, 1 the branches are slender, and the leaves alter- 

 nate, linear-pointed, odorous, covered with glandular punctures, with 

 smooth, ciliate or serrulate edges. The flowers are terminal, solitary 

 or united in few-flowered cymes, each accompanied by one or two 

 bractlets applied against the base of the calyx. 



Beside Coleonema are placed seven very nearly allied genera, so 

 nearly allied in fact, that they might perhaps be united into one 

 generic group. All are from the same country, having the same 

 habit and the same vegetative organs, the same glandular reservoirs, 

 almost the same flowers, and fruits and seeds of the same organization. 

 Their differential characters are inconsiderable. Thus Adenandra 

 consists of Coleonemas with sterile stamens not hidden in the groove 

 of the petals, naked and subsessile. The anthers are surmounted 

 by a stipitate gland. The styles unite into a short column capi- 

 tate and stigmatiferous at apex. Acmadenia consists of Adenandra, 

 whose petals have a barbate or ciliate claw ; and if their anthers are 

 surmounted by a gland, it is sessile. Agathosma, with the petals of 

 Acmadenia, has styles forming by their union an elongated column 

 whose stigmatiferous apex does not dilate into a lobed head. 

 Barosma has petals with a short glabrous claw, and the style of 

 Agathosma ; but the flowers are axillary and not terminal, as in 

 all the preceding genera. The true Diosma are now only consi- 

 dered as plants whose flower is that of an Adenandra, as to the 

 conformation of the gynseceuin, but having only five fertile sta- 

 mens, alternating with the petals. There is also an isostemonous 

 character in Euchoetis and Macrostglis. Both have unguiculate petals, 

 transversely barbate ; but the former has the short capitate style of 

 Adenandra or Diosma, and the latter the elongated non-thickened 

 apex of Barosma or Agathosma, with the terminal inflorescence of 

 the latter. 



This series also contains some exceptional types : Empleurum, with 

 tetramerous, apetalous, monoecious flowers, and a gyna3ceum reduced 



1 TnuNB., Fl. Cap., ii. 126 {Diosma). — Haev. & Sond., Fl. Cap., i. 311— Bot. Mag. 

 t. 2332. — Walp., Ann., vii. 511. 



2 White or pink; small. 



