48 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



would seem, to bo ascribed to Ffugonia, but in wliicli the youug seeds 

 are nearly superposed, instead of berug collateral, and capped by a 

 common obturator. Finally in tbe two American species of Hufjonia 

 destitute of hooks, like most of these fi'om New Caledonia, the hairs on 

 the internal face of the petals, but little developed in the latter, are 

 here much longer and more numerous, whence the origin of the 

 name Rchepctalum^ considered as forming a special genus. The . 

 bases of the petals, already thick and fleshy in the New Caledonian 

 species, become here more prominent within, and may even represent 

 a kind of middle crest or basilar scale. The presence of this thicken- 

 ing does not, however, suffice to characterise a genus, any more than 

 does the prominent alternipetalous glands of the androceiim tube, 

 which characters are found in some Asiatic species of Ihicjonia, 

 This, with its tlu-ee sections, - comprises about twenty siiecies.^ 



Oclithocosns,^' allied to Ilugonia, is distinguished from it by its 

 perianth persisting round the fruit, its single style, and its tliy septi- 

 cidal pericarp. Three species are known : one American,^ whose 

 dry petals are not very thick, and whose ripe carpels are, like those 

 of the Flaxes, divided by a false partition; the second,'' a native of 

 tropical western Africa, whose ovary cells present a centripetal rudi- 

 ment of a false partition, and whose petals thicken and harden round 

 the capsule. In the third, ^ the type of a genus Fhyllocosmus,^ the 

 petals become hard, but the false partition is said to disappear. All 

 these plants are frutescent, glabrous, with alternate leaves, the 

 stipules and flowers grouped in cymes on small axillary branches. 



In another secondary group,^ formed by Ixonanthes,^^ the ovary 



1 Benth. Gen. 244, n. 9. 



2 HuooNiA : 



sect. 5. 



1. Miistii.r (Ray). 



2. Roiichcria (Pl.). 



3. Dui-ttiiiiea (Pl.). 



4. Sarcuthecu (Bl,.). 



5. Ilihi'jntaliim (Benth.). 



= Cav. Diss. iii. 177, t. 73.— Buck. Dec. i. t. 8. 

 9. — Wight et Aen. rmlr. i. 72. — Wight, III. t. 

 32.— Oliv. Fl. Trup. Afi: i. 270.— W alp. Ann. 

 i. 96; ii. 130, 137. 



* Benth. in Hook. Loud. Jourii. ii. 366. — B. H. 

 Ooi. 245, n. 12.-11. Bn. in Adansoiiia, x. 336. 



5 0. Sotaima: Benth. loc. cit. — Walp. Uqy. v. 

 135. 



^ 0. Scsxihjloriis H. Bn. hie. cit. — P!ii/llocosmiis 

 sessilifloriis Oi.iv. Fl. Trap. Afi: i. 273, n. 2. 



' 0. africaiiiis Hook. f. in Hook. Icon. t. 773 ; 

 Niger, 240, t. 23.— Walp. Ann. i. lli.—Penta- 

 coccn leoncDsis Tuiicz. in Bull. Mosc. xxvi (1863), 

 601. 



^ F. ({fricaiius Kl. in Abii. d. Berl. Acad. 

 (18.50), 232.— Oliv. loc. cit. n. 1.— Walp. Ann. 

 vii. 464. 



» Ixonantheic [Liiieit Irib. 4 B. H. Gen. 242, 

 245). 



'" Jack, Mai. Misc. ex. Hook. C'onip. to Dot. 

 Mag. i. 154.— B. H. Oen. 246, n. 14.- H. Bn. in 

 Adauffonia x. 367. — Ixionaitthes Endl. Gen. n. 

 6557. — Emmcnantliiis Hook, et Auv. in Beech. 



