298 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Chiococca raccmosa. 



Fig. 284. Diagram. 



corolla, and their monadelphous filaments form a short tube around 

 the style above which they become free, more or less hairy, and 

 support a dorsifixed bilocular extrorse anther,^ dehiscing by two 

 longitudinal clefts. The ovary is surmounted by a thick disk and a 

 style whose stigmatiferous extremity is slightly dilated and almost 



entire. The ovarian cells are two in 

 number, rarely more, each enclosing a 

 descending ovule inserted near the top of 

 the internal angle, with dorsal raphe, and 

 micropyle interior and superior.^ The 

 fruit is a small drupe with a flesh of little 

 thickness or coriaceous, monospermous 

 putamens, and the seed encloses under its 

 coats an abundant fleshy or coriaceous 

 albumen, and an axile embryo with oval 

 or elliptical cotyledons and superior radicle. 

 Chiococca is from tropical America ; the woody and slender stems 

 are often climbing. The leaves are opposite entire small glabrous 

 with pointed and persistent stipules. The flowers ^ are in axillary 

 clusters of cymes, often unilateral, without bracts.* 



Among the genera, all American, ranged beside the preceding, 

 several ought not to be separated from it except as sections ; for 

 notwithstanding some considerable external differences, the funda- 

 mental organization of the flower remains though it has been often 

 misunderstood. Thus, Asemnantha puhescens, from Yucatan, has the 

 tetramerous flowers of Chiococca ; but the four lobes of the corolla 

 are nearly valvate, though they preserve a very slight trace of 

 imbrication, and the tomentose plant bears axillary few-flowered 

 cymes or even solitary flowers. Scolosanthiis^ small spinous or 

 unarmed shrubs of the Antilles, has also small tetramerous axillary 

 flowers, solitary or in small cymes, with narrow elongate calycinal 

 divisions, a small elongate corolla with lobes very distinctly imbricate, 

 and, like the preceding, stamens monadelphous at the base, with 

 extrorse anthers. Ceratopyxis verbenacea, a resinous shrub of Cuba, 



* Or with submarginal clefts. 



2 Its short funicle is dilated to an obturator 

 more or less developed. 



3 White or yellowish. The fruit is said to be 

 ordinarily white. 



* There are half a dozen species. Hook. Hx. 

 FL t. 93.— R. et Pay. FL Per. et Chil. t. 219.— 

 Griseb. FL Brit. W.-Ind. 336.— Walp. Ecp. ii. 

 483; vi. 45; Ann. i. 374; v. 112. 



