296 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



consists of shrubby or subshrubby plants with opposite leaves and 

 flowers united in compound terminal, not unfrequently corymbiform, 

 cymes. 



Jackia, a large tree of Malaya and the Indian Archipelago, has the 

 flowers of Garphalea, with a slender and biovulate placenta in each 

 cell, and an irregular, finally coriaceous and finely reticulate-veined 

 accrescent calyx. These flowers are numerous, in large uniparous 

 compound cymes, with foHaceous bracts analogous to the calycinal 

 lobes. 



PhyllomeUa coronata (fig. 281), a Cuban shrub, also has the 

 accrescent calyx of the preceding genera, membranous and regular. 



PhyllomeUa coronata. 



Fig. 281. Long. sect, of flower (f) 



In each of its two ovarian cells is an erect placenta of Jachia and 

 Garphalea, but with a single ovule in each instead of two or three. 

 What chiefly renders this genus abnormal in the series is, that the 

 lobes of the corolla, when the flower, as is often the case, is 

 hexamerous, are arranged in two verticils : three exterior and three 

 interior alternate. In the pentamerous flowers, there are two 

 exterior lobes. 



Betiniphijllum, the place of which is most doubtful, forms here also 

 an abnormal subseries and has nothing in common with most of the 

 preceding genera, except that there are in each cell two collateral 

 ascending ovules with micropyle inferior and exterior. They are 

 curved, amphitropous and borne on an ascending funicle. The ovary 



