302 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



In the true Canthium the fruit is usually didymous or heart-shaped, 

 drupaceous, with one or two putamens. More rarely there are three 

 and as many cells in the ovary. In Vangueria there are from three 

 to six, very often five, superposed to the divisions of the corolla. 

 The number of cells or putamens in the fruit varies in like manner. 

 We can make it only a section of Ganthium. So likewise with Fadogia, 

 Guviera, which have usually as many cells in the ovary as there are 

 divisions in the calyx of the corolla ; Ancylanthus, which may have 

 the limb of the corolla incurved ; Pyrostria^ whose polygamo- dioecious 

 flowers have 2-10 cells in the ovary; Scijphochlamijs, which is 

 Pyrostria with the involucral bracts of the inflorescence connate in a 

 ^ ,^. ,^ . V ,.^ sort of horn. In the last the 



Canthium {Cuviera) acutrflorum, 



stigmatiferous portion of the 

 style loses more or less the 

 mitre or hood shape and be- 

 comes nearly claviform. So 

 also in Cydophyllum^ oceanic 

 plants which often have rather 

 large flowers and two cells in 

 the ovary like the true Can- 

 thium, There are types of 

 this genus, such as Peponidiiwi 

 and C his iopliy Ilea, which have 

 ten to twelve cells in the ovary and fruit. The flowers in this genus 

 are often unisexual or polygamous. They are woody plants, not 

 unfrequently climbing, rarely herbaceous, which have opposite or 

 verticillate leaves, and axillary flowers, in cymes or glomerules, 

 sometimes solitary. In some species the ovules are incompletely 

 anatropous and ascending. They are found in all the tropical regions 

 of the old world. The albumen, usually continuous, occasionally 

 becomes ruminate. Very near Canthium, Craterispermum, a shrub of 

 tropical Africa, has flowers in axillary cymes, with a cup- shaped 

 accrescent calyx, a corolla hairy in the throat, a fusiform stigma, entire 

 or with two branches, and a 1, 2-celled fruit with chartaceous endocarp. 

 Prismatomeris is scarcely distinct from Canthium. It has the valvate 

 corolla, the fleshy fruit, the descending ovule. But the stylary 

 branches are linear-lanceolate and the radicle of the embryo is inferior, 

 which leads to the ovule being incompletely anatropous. They are 

 shrubs of south-eastern Asia and the Indian Archipelago. 



Fi<?. 293. Lonj?. sect, of flower. 



