72 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Aiicuha, is ordinarily pentamerous. It consists of trees or shrubs, 

 sometimes climbing, growing in New Zealand, Chili, and on the 

 mountains of Brazil. The leaves are alternate, without stipules,^ 

 glabrous, with limb generally unsymmetrical, and the flowers,^ articu- 

 late on a pedicel, are collected in more or less ramified and compound 

 clusters. Eight species are distinguished.^ 



Torricellea tilicEfolia,^ a small Himalayan tree, has pentamerous^ 

 flowers analogous to those of the preceding genera, with a very short 

 calyx, five valvate petals, and five alternate stamens, inserted round 

 a rudimentary gynaBcium (which may be absent) surrounded by a 

 depressed disk. In the female flowers, the saclike receptacle bears 

 four to six short sepals, inserted on the margin of the opening. The 

 concavity contains an ovary most frequently trilocular, surmounted 

 by three short and thick stylary branches, entire or bifid at the 

 summit. The cells, or one or two of them, enclose a descending 

 ovule, the short funicle of which is somewhat thickened above the 

 micropyle primarily interior and superior. The fruit is a drupe with 

 a crustaceous, plurilocular, generally monospermous putamen. The 

 seed is descending, and the embryo, of small volume, occupies the 

 upper portion of a fleshy embryo. Torricellia has alternate, petiolate, 

 dentate, 5-7 -nerved leaves, and flowers arranged in ramified groups 

 of pendent cymes with slender axes and pedicels furnished with 

 lateral bracteoles, articulated superiorly in the female inflorescence. 



II. GARRYA SERIES. 



In these plants which have by themselves constituted a distinct 

 family, the flowers are dioecious and generally tetramerous. The 

 male flowers of Garry a eUiptica^ (fig. 57, 58), a species cultivated in 



^ The petiole, however (articulate at the base), Seem. Journ. JBot. iii. 361, t. 41. — B. H. Gen, 



may be dilated at the margin into two small 952, n. 12. Decaisne {Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr. xx. 



layers resembling narrow stipules. 159) makes it a Haloragea. 



' Small, yellow or greenish. ^ There are some 3, 4-merous. 



' R. et Pay. Syst. 259 {I)ecostea).—C. Gay, " DoroL. ex Lindl. Bot. Reg. i. 1686 ; Ann. 



Fl. Chil. viii. 394, t. 33 ter {Decostea) .—Rkovl, Sc. Nat. ser. 2, ii. 157 ; Veg.Kwgd. (1846) 295, 



Ch. de PI. Nouv.-Zel. t. 19.— Hook, f. FL Nov.- fig. 203.— Endl. Gen. n. 1900.— Payer, Fam. 



Zel. i. 98 ; Sandb. N.-Zeal. Fl. 104.— Walp. Nat. 124.— B. H. Gen. 951, n. 8.— H. Bn. Bull. 



Ann. iv. 432 (Becostea). Soc. Linn. Far. 139 ; Compt. Rend. Assoc. Frang. 



4 DC. Prodr. iv. 267.— Endl. Gen.n. 4557.— (1877) c. tab. 



