NATDMAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



II? STACKHOUSIA SEKIE8. 



Staekhomia monogyna. 



Stackhousia^ (fig. 8-11), which has been made a distinct family, 

 has regular and hermaphrodite flowers. The receptacle has the 

 form of a hemispheric cup, the cavity of which is covered with a 

 glandular disk. Outside the more or less salient or often but 

 slightly developed edges of this disk, the lips of the receptacle give 

 insertion to the perianth and to a perigynous androecium, viz., to 

 five imbricated sepals and five petals alternating with them, much 

 longer exserted, free and remaining so in their lower and upper 

 parts, whilst for a variable extent of the intermediate part they 

 approach and unite by tlieii* margins in an elongated tube resembling 

 that of a gamopetalous corolla. The limb is imbricated in pre- 

 floration. The stamens are the same in number as the petals, 



alternating with them, each formed of a 

 filament free or connate with the corolla 

 and an anther bilocular, introrse, de- 

 hiscing by two longitudinal clefts.^ 

 Generally two of these stamens, the 

 lateral, are much shorter than the three 

 others. The gynsecium is free to the 

 bottom of the receptacular cup; it is 

 formed of an ovary, often with three, 

 more rarely with two, four or five cells, 

 surmounted by a style divided more or 

 less deeply into stigmatiferous slips 

 equal in number to the ovarian cells. 

 The latter present, near the base of their 

 internal angle, an ascending, anatropous 

 ovule with mycropyle primarily directed downwards and outwards, 

 later turned a little laterally. The fruit is dry, often formed of two 

 or three achenes^ which finally separate from the central column, 

 itself divided into as many fine threads as there are carpels. They 



Fig. 8. Long. sect, of flower (f). 



^ Sm. Trans. Linn. Soc. iv. 218. — Endl. Gen. 

 n. 5763.— LiNDL. Veff. Kingd. 589, fig. 400.— 

 ScHUCH. Linncea, xxvi. 1. — B. H. Gen. 371, 998. 

 — H. Bn. Payer Fam. Nat. 219 ; Adansonia, xi. 

 289.— ScHNizL. Iconogr. i. 250.~Benth. DC. 

 Frodf. XV. sect. i. 500.— Tripteroeoceus Endl. 



Enum. PL Huegel. 17; Gen. n. 5764. — Plokio- 

 stigma Schuch. loc.cit. 39. 



2 "Pollen sub-4-lobum echinnlatum." — 

 (Benth). 



^ The mesocarp is often at first somewhat 

 fleshy and separable from the putamen. 



