4 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



covered with anatropous or campylotropous ovules.^ The fruit is 

 fleshy or coriaceous/ finally breaking more or less irregularly and 

 allowing the escape of a large number of small seeds (fig. 6, 7) ; 

 they are curved or spiral and enclose an embryo likewise curved, 

 fleshy, without albumen, with a conical radicle, nearly equal in length 

 to the cotyledons.^ There are some species of Melastoma whose 

 flowers have six or seven parts. All are woody ; they are generally 

 shrubs, of which some forty species have been described.^ Probably 

 they are much less numerous. All inhabit the Old World, especially 

 the tropical regions of Asia, Oceania, and the islands of the Indian 

 Ocean. Their stems are almost always erect and covered with 

 asperities of variable structure. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, 

 entire, and 5-7-nerved at the base with well developed secondary 

 nervures extending from one extremity of the limb to the other, like 

 the principal nerve, in the form of outwardly convex arcs ; a character 

 nearly constant in this family. The flowers are terminal, solitary or 

 in cymes more or less branched, and accompanied by bracts some- 

 times well developed. 



In two Malayan Mclastomas, oi which the genus Otanthera^ has 

 been made, the stamens differ a little in the form of the connective, 

 which prolonged below the anther is accompanied at its base by two 

 tubercles or spurs ; but the fruit is that of other Melastomas from 

 which we can separate them only as a section. 



Osheckia is very near Melastoma ; it is distinguished chiefly by the 

 consistence of its fruit, w^hich is a valvicide capsule with four or five 

 cells. The stamens, moreover, from eight to ten in number, have 

 within the base of the connective two tubercles similar to those of 

 Melastoma, but this connective is very little prolonged below the cells 

 of the anther. The plants are natives of Asia, Oceania, and tropical 

 Africa. Their habits and organs of vegetation are, like those of 

 Melastoma, very variable. Thus Dissotis consists of OshecMas often 



) With double envelope. Bat. i. p. i. 502.— Bl, Mas. Lugd.-Bat. i. 50.— 



2 Its surface, or rather that of the receptacle Benth. Fl. Austral, iii. 1^2.— But. Beg. t. 672. 



which envelops it, is covered with the same —Bot. Mag. t. 529, 2241. Walp. Rep. ii. 132 • 



hairs, scales, or spines seen in the flower and v. 703 ; Ann. ii. 564 ; iv. 818.— Hook. Fl. Ind. 



which persist, hut growing and becoming more ii. 523.— Baker, FL. Maunt. 121. 



distant from each other as the fruit enlarges. 5 g^. Flora (1831), 488; Mas. Lugd.-Bat. i. 



■'» Equal or somewhat unequal. 56, t. 20.— Naud. loc. cit. xiii. 352.— B.H. Gen. 



4 Labill. Sert. Austro-cakd. t. 64.— Wight, 748, n. 43.— Hook. Fl. Lid. ii. 522. -Lachnopo- 



Illmtr. t. 95. — Kokth. Vcrh. Nat. Gesc/i. t. 49. dinm Bl. Mas. Lugd.-Bat. i. 56. 

 — Tuw. F.um. Fl. Zegl. 106.-xMiq. Fl. Ind.- 



