MELASTOMA CEM. 



Tibouch'ma {Pleroma) Gaudi- 

 chaudiana. 



Fig. 9. Flower. 



with two interior basilar horns, more or less developed according as 

 the stamen is alternipetalons or oppositipetalous ; Pleroma, hairy 

 shrubs or herbs from the Antilles and tropical America, whose penta- 

 merous flowers are similar to those of Fritzschia, with very variable 

 habit and inflorescencej the latter some- 

 times subcapitate ; Diplostegium, having 

 the flower of Pleroma with bracts forming 

 under the flower a double calycular 

 appendage ; Heplicstionia, inhabiting 

 arid mountains, shrubby, rigid, covered 

 with scaly hairs, the flower always that 

 of Pleroma ; Purpurella, frutescent, 

 hispid, and having all the floral cha- 

 racters of Pleroma, with anthers de- 

 hiscing by large pores (as in certain 

 true Acisantheras) ; Macairea, shrubs 

 from Brazil and Guyana, equally hairy, with tetramerous flowers, 

 collected in terminal and ramified clusters of cymes ; Pterolepis, her- 

 baceous and frutescent plants, with receptacle and sepals covered 

 with branched hairs ; flow^ers sometimes subcapitate (in other respects 

 very analogous to those of the old-world 

 Osheckias) ; Ernestia, herbs from Peru, Co- 

 lumbia and Brazil, with rather large 

 glandular leaves ; flowers of Acisanthera, 

 arranged in terminal di- or trichotomous 

 cymes, with the appendages of the connec- 

 tive rather longer and more slender; Ap- 

 pendicularia, of Guyana, having the stamens 

 of Ernestia, with spikelike inflorescence ; 

 Dicho'Mndra, which is Ernestia wdth 4-5- 

 merous flowers, but a glabrous ovary; Nep- 

 sera, inhabiting the shores of the Antilles, Brazil, Columbia and 

 Guyana, and having, with the foliage and inflorescence of Ernestia, 

 4-merous flowers, a 3-celled ovary and a connective with double 

 subulate and shorter appendage ; finally Arthrostemma, from the 

 Antilles and South America, slender herbs, with the leaves of 

 Nepsera or Ernestia, but serrulate ; flowers grouped in looser cymes, 

 4-merous, with unequal anthers, furnished with a double horn 

 analogous to that of Nepsera, Thus constituted, the very various- 



TiboucJiiiia {Arthrostemma) 

 Jragilis. 



Fisr. 10. Flower. 



