ONAGRARIACE^. 473 



the leaves or form a short spike (?) at the summit of the branches, 

 situate each in the axil of a bract, and resemble at first a monstrous 

 plant, because the inferior ovary is adnate with the branch that bears 

 it and the base of the petiole of the axillary leaf. The same is the 

 case, consequently, with the turbinate, deformed, subdrupaceous 

 fruit. Above the ovary, the receptacle is elongated in a slender 

 tube, the superior orifice of which, furnished with a glandular collar, 

 supports four sepals, four petals, and two verticils of four stamens. 

 The base of the style is surrounded by an epigynous disk, and the 

 two or three cells of the ovary enclose each a descending ovule, 

 with micropyle superior and primarily interior, but ultimately lateral. 

 The plant, quite glabrous, with a reddish pruinose stem, bears 

 alternate, petiolate, lanceolate, and dentelate leaves. 



III. OIRGMK SERIES. 



The flowers of the Circece^ (fig. 443-446) are constructed on the 

 binary type ; they are hermaphrodite and have a receptacle in the 

 form of a sac prolonged beyond the ovary in a short obconical tube, 

 the margin of which bears two lateral valvate sepals, two alternate, 

 imbricate petals, often sloped at the summit, and two stamens super- 

 posed to the sepals and formed each of a free filament and a bilocular 

 introrse anther, dehiscing by two longitudinal clefts. The ovary is 

 of two oppositipetalous cells, and is surmounted by a style surrounded 

 by an epigynous disk the stigmatiferous summit of which is enlarged 

 to a head with two small often unequal lobes. In the internal angle 

 of each ovarian cell is inserted an ascending ovule,^ more or less 

 completely anatropous, with micropyle turned downwards and out- 

 wards.^ The fruit, short, coriaceous, indehiscent, covered with 

 hooked hairs, has one or two cells * containing each one ascending 

 seed,^ incompletely anatropous, with fleshy embryo, straight and 

 destitute of albumen. The Circece are evergreen, little ramified herbs 

 of the cold and temperate regions of Europe, Asia, and North 



I[, 



1 Circcca T. Inst. 301, t, 155.— L. Gen. n. 24. ^ Sometimes two, nearly superposed. 



— Gjertn. Fruct. i. 114, t. 24. — Schkuhr, ^ m^ag a double envelope. 



Handb. t. 2.— DC. Prodr. iii. 63.— Endl. Gen. n. ^ it jg on this character that Ascherson and 



6130.— H. Bx. Paijer Fam. Nat. 375 ; Adansonia, Malnus have founded their division of the genus 



xii. 24.— B. H. Gen. 793, n. 20.— Aschers. et into : A. Uniloculares, B. Biloculares. 



Magx. Bot. Zeit. (1870) n. 23 (392), 47-49.— s As it is incompletely anatropous, the hilum, 



ooK. Fl. Ind. ii. 589. — Ocimastrum Eupr. Fl. situate near the middle of the interior margin, 



vgr. 366. is finally parallel to the embryo. 



