35i 



Natural history of plants. 



Asia, are, like the Glennieas, closely allied, by their foliage and fruit, 

 to Sajnndus and Nephelium ; but they have, Avith the entire and inde- 

 hiscent fruit of Glenniea, the calyx with hardly imbricate short 

 divisions of JVephelimii, and not the larger sepals, free and distinctly 

 imbricate of Sapindus or Euplwria. These sepals are again met 

 with in Mdicocca (fig. 363, 364), trees from tropical America, whose 

 indehiscent fi'uit is nearly that of Talma and Lccaniodisms., of which 

 the regular flowers have the petals, but without the bearded interior 

 plate of Talisia, and the nearly equal stamens with extrorse anthers. 



Melicocca bijuga. 



Alcctnjoii iweihuiii. 



Fig. 363. Flower (I). Fig. 36-i. Longitudinal section of flower. 



Beside the preceding genera, but rather doubtfully, we place three 

 exceptional types having the pinnate leaves and solitary oviiles 



of Melicocca and Schlcichcra^ with the mi- 

 cropyle directed downwards and out- 

 wards ; the Huerteas, trees from Peru and 

 Antilles, whose flowers have flve petals, 

 but whose two ovary cells are incomplete, 

 the disk having the flve glands inter- 

 posed to the stamens, not exterior ; the 

 Alectryons (flg. 365), trees from New 

 Zealand, whose flowers are apetalous, 

 with a gynteceum and fruit reduced to a 

 single carpel, and whose stamens are 

 neither exterior nor interior to the disk, 

 bitt encircled at their base by the nearly 

 annular lobes ; Eriandrostachys, a shrub 

 from Madagascar, haviug long male 

 spikes loaded with glomerules, in which the sepals, five or six in 

 number, are arranged with great regularity around the disk and 

 the eight stamens interior to it, but forming an ii-regular envelope 

 because they are very unequal, the outer ones being short, thick, 



Fip 



3G5. Longitudinal sec- 

 tion of fruit (^). 



