ULMAGE^. 



161 



Pourouma mollis. 



(fig. 124-126). There are Figs in all parts of the world, but 

 especially in the tropical regions. Sparattosyce^ trees of New 

 Caledonia, derive their name from their common floral receptacle 

 being finally divided and open, which is not the case in the Figs ; 

 and from their female flowers, situated upon separate inflorescences, 

 having a style emerging from the apical opening of the receptacle, 

 that of the Figs remaining enclosed. 



In the Soroceece^ the flowers are in clusters or catkins composed of 

 cymes or glomerules (as in the inflorescence of most Morece). The 

 Sorocece proper, shrubs of South America, have pedicellate flowers of 

 both sexes. In Pseudosorocea^ plants of the same regions, they are 

 sessile and disposed along the two margins of an elongate and 

 flattened axis, resembling a spike, but which, like that of many 

 Morece^ has one or two faces without flowers and often reduced, at 

 adult age, to simple longitudinal ridges. Finally, in Sahagunia^ 

 likewise American, and one species inhabit* 

 ing Mexico, not only does the male catkin 

 present this peculiarity, but the male flowers, 

 instead of being, as in the preceding genera, 

 furnished with sepals and an equal number of 

 superposed stamens, are represented only by 

 bare stamens, disposed in great number and 

 without apparent order on the common re- 

 ceptacle and intermixed with a variable number 

 of bracts. 



In one and the same genus, Pseudolmedia^ 

 according to the species, wre have seen the 

 ovule inserted more or less high on the wall of 

 the ovarian cell, and also by an umbilicum 

 more or less elongate ; so that this ovule was 

 in one case descending, and in another attached 

 laterally to the ovary. It is this last arrangement which is presented 

 in Pourouma (fig. 127), trees of tropical America, which, by this 

 character, serve as intermediaries between the genera which precede 

 and those which follow, and of which the group Conocephalece has been 

 formed. Pourouma has a free ovary, enclosed in a sac, through an 

 opening in the summit of which passes the style afterwards dilated 

 to a stigmatiferous head. The flowers are grouped in compound 

 cymes with axes sometimes very short. In Conocephalus (fig. 128), 



VOL. VI. 11 



Fig. 127. Long. sect, of 

 female flower (f). 



