98 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLAXTS. 



at anthesis. The scarcely perigynous androceum is formed of from 

 four to twelve stamens, united among themselves by the base of their 

 filaments into a short tube, cleft on one side, and becoming shorter 

 the nearer they are to this cleft, toward the edges of which we only 



Triijonia vilhsn. 



Fig. 138. Flower (i). 



Fig. 139. Long. sect, of flower. 



Fig. HO. Seed (f). 



, 141. Long. sect, 

 of seed. 



Fig. 142. Bilateral 

 long. sect, of seed. 



see a variable number of staininodes. All the stamens are disiDosed 

 according to a symmetrical plan, which is the same as that of the 

 corolla, the staminodcs and smallest stamens being found on the side 

 of the spuiTed petal. The anthers are bilocular, introrse, dehiscing 

 by two longitudinal clefts. The gyua-ceum is free, formed of an 

 ovary with three cells, surmounted by a style, whose entire summit 

 is dilated into a small head or into a stigmatiferous cupule cut 

 straight or obliquely. In the inner angle of each cell is seen a 

 placenta, bcnriiig an indefinite number of descendent anatro230us 

 ovules. The fruit is a tricoccate septicidal capsule, whose numerovis 

 seeds are covered with long woolly hairs, and whose oblique embryo, 

 with wide suborbicular, foliaceous cotyledons, is surrounded by a 

 thick fleshy albumen. Trir/onia of which at least twenty species are 

 distinguished, 1 consists of sarmentosc or climbing sluubs with 



1 n. B. K. Nor. Gen. et Spec. v. 141.— Cam- — Walp. if/y. i. 248 ; ii. 769 ; Aim. i. 76 ; ii. 

 BESS, in A. S. H. Fl. Jlraa. Mcr. ii. 80, t. 10.5. 86; iv. 240. 



