ULMACE^. 155 



involucre formed of imbricate bracts, as in Parartocarpus. In tlie 

 female inflorescence, the cavities in which the pistils are lodged are 

 surrounded superiorly by a great number of male flowers the anthers 

 of which appear sterile. 



Bagassa in this group may be considered the analogue of Madura 

 in the Morus series. The male flowers are unknown, but 

 the female flowers have a superior perianth, formed of four 

 thick and fleshy sepals, contiguous without a true union in 

 nearly the entire length of their margins and free only at their 

 obtuse summit. They surround a free ovary, similar to that of 

 Artocarpiis and surmounted by an eccentric style with two unequal or 

 nearly equal branches. The fruit encloses a seed the embryo of 

 which, surrounded by an inconsiderable albumen, has oblong folia- 

 ceous cotyledons and a curved accumbent radicle, the summit of 

 which is directed downwards. Bagassa consists of trees from Guyana 

 with opposite leaves and very numerous female flowers sessile upon 

 the entire surface of a common spherical receptacle. Cudrania is 

 doubtless, on its side, the analogue of Flecospermum and Cardiogyne, 

 It has their alternate leaves, spinous branches, globose inflorescence, 

 and replicate embryo, with conduplicate cotyledons ; but the stamens, 

 generally four in number, instead of incurved, have rectilinear or 

 even somewhat outwardly recurved filaments. The Cudranias are 

 all Asiatic and Oceanic. Helianthostylis^ a tree of northern Brazil, 

 also much resembles Madura in its external characters. The male 

 flowers are in spherical capitules on the surface of which they are 

 inserted by a short pedicel. The gamosepalous calyx, in four 

 divisions, surrounds four superposed stamens, with extrorse anthers, 

 definitively exserted. The filaments are borne on the base of a long 

 rudimentary gyneecium the ovary of which is stipitate, uniovulate, 

 and the style long exserted. The fruit, globose and scabrous, en- 

 closes under a thin spherical pericarp one seed the embryo of which 

 has two or three large thick and fleshy cotyledons. 



Olmedia has given its name to a sub-series (Olmediece) in which 

 the receptacle of inflorescence has the form of a cup generally of 

 little depth or even nearly plane the margin of which bears, as in a 

 capitule of a composite, an involucre formed of several ranks of 

 unequal, alternate imbricate bracts. In the male capitules, the 

 flowers are indefinite in number. In the female inflorescence, there 

 are often also a great number, more rarely a single one. In Olmedia 



