160 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



rescence is a ramified cluster of umbellules, with articulate pedicels. 

 The obconical receptacle is surmounted by a depressed disk crenelate 

 at the margin. There is no calyx ; the petals are triangular, valvate, 

 with stellate hairs, and the bilocular ovary is crowned with two 

 slender stylary branches. The fruit is ovoid or obovate, with a nearly 

 circular transverse section, or a little compressed perpendicular to 

 the partition, drupaceous, but a little fleshy and enclosing two often 

 concave putamens. Horsfieldia has the flower of Astrotricha, except 

 that the stylopods represent a conical enlargement of the base of the 

 style, and the two mericarps constituting the fruit, scarcely drupaceous, 

 separate from each other at maturity like those of Mjjodocarpus, 

 They are shrubs from Java, Japan and North America, with prickly 

 stems and woolly or tomentose surfaces, peltate or cordate, palmatifid 

 or palmatilobed leaves, and flowers in numerous small capituliform 

 umbels, with involucres and sessile all along the axes of a large 

 ramified spike. 



One of the oldest genera of this group is Schefflera, estabUshed by 

 FoKSTEB, in 1776, for an oceanic plant whose flowers {^g. 200) are 



pentamerous, with a concave, ob- 

 conical or obpyramidal receptacle ; 

 the margin bears a very short 

 cbIjx with dentiform sepals, five 

 valvate petals and fixe alternate 

 stamens. The ovary, inferior and 

 surmounted by an undulate disk, 

 contains from five to ten uniovulate 

 cells, and is surmounted by a coni- 

 cal style of the same number of 

 divisions varying in form with age. 

 At first short, obtuse, indistinct, 

 they increase in the fruit and take 

 the form of branches with a some- 

 what enlarged stigmatiferous extremity, especially in the fertile 

 flowers. The ovary becomes a drupe, the putamens of which, five 

 to ten in number, enclose each a compressed seed. The two 

 Scheffleras hitherto described inhabit New Zealand, the Viti isles and 

 New Caledonia. They are glabrous shrubs with alternate, compound- 

 digitate leaves, and flowers in ramified clusters, charged with nume- 

 rous umbellules the floral pedicels of which are not articulate. 



Scheffiera digitata. 



Fig. 200. Long. sect, of flower 

 with short styles {}f). 



