BUBIACEJE. 265 



Eichardia is very near Spermacoce ; it has an ovary of three or four 

 cells, a well-developed calyx of 3-8 divisions, and a style divided 

 above into three or four recurved branches, pointed or terminated by 

 a stigmatiferous enlargement of variable form. The fruit separates 

 into three or four cocci, indehiscent or dehiscent near the top, united 

 or not by a small central column. They are herbs of tropical or 

 subtropical America, covered with hairs, wdth opposite leaves and 

 flowers in glomerulous capitules. Ferama, also of tropical America, 

 has a fruit very analogous to that of Richardia, dehiscing by a trans- 

 verse cleft above the middle, with or without a thin persisting partition. 

 They are herbaceous plants, often very small, from tropical America, 

 whose calyx (?) has only two folioles and the 2-4-celled ovary is 

 surmounted by a slender exserted style with 2-4 stigmatiferous 

 divisions. The flowers, small and numerous, are in false spikes or 

 capitules, on long and slender peduncles, and plunged, as it were, 

 in tufts of numerous setaceous bracts. 



In Triodon, very different in habit, being much-branched American 

 shrubs with small leaves and flowers in glomerulous spikes, the fruit 

 separates into two indehiscing cocci, and the calycinal divisions are 

 2-4, with interposed stipular teeth ; the ovary, bilocular, is sur- 

 mounted by a style with two branches bristling with papillae. 

 Psyllocarpus, not unlike in habit and with inflorescence also spike- 

 like, has two large lateral divisions in the calyx, with others smaller 

 interposed. The ovary is bilocular and surmounted by a style, the 

 two stigmatiferous branches of which are short and generally obtuse ; 

 the fruit is dicoccous, much compressed from back to front, and each 

 of the cocci finally opens internally by a longitudinal cleft. They 

 are low Brazilian shrubs. Gaillonia has also the flowers of Spermacoce 

 or nearly so; the calyx is 2-6-dentate, or dilated to a hom, or 

 covered with feathery hairs. The ovary has two uniovulate cells, 

 and the style is slender, elongate, divided above into two short 

 papillose branches. The two cocci of the fruit are indehiscent and 

 finally separate. They are Asiatic and African shrubs, often rigid, 

 with leaves little developed, flowers solitary or united in spikes of 



349, 350 (Mitracarpum).—A. Gkay, Man. (ed. 2) 29, 30 {Biodia), 31 {Mitracarpum) ; Ann. i. 37 

 171.— Walp. ^^j?. ii. 464 {Borreria), 465,466 {Borreria) ; ii. 741 {Borrena), 742, 743 {Hypo- 

 {Biodia), 467 {Mitracarpum) ; vi. 27 {Borreria), dematium) ; y.l05 (Borreria), 106 (Mitracarpum). 



