316 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Barchellia buhalina. 



Fig. 305. Group of young fruit. 



They are shrubs from the tropical regions of Asia, Oceania and 

 especially tropical Africa. 



BurchelUa {^g. 305), also from south Africa, has jSowers closely 

 resembhng in their organization those of some Gardenias, with 



narrow-pointed divisions 

 in the persistent cal}^ ; 

 a contorted corolla the 

 throat of which is covered 

 with hairs ; anthers en- 

 closed, sessile or nearly 

 so, basifixed, surmounted 

 by a prolongation of the 

 connective, and two mul- 

 tiovulate ovarian cells, 

 with a fleshy fruit. But 

 the style, short and 

 enlarged in the middle, 

 terminates in a truncate 

 denticulate stigmatiferous extremity, and the flowers terminal and 

 sessile, accompanied with bracts like stipules, are grouped in a 

 contracted cyme which has been erroneously taken for an umbel. 



In Flagenium, formerly referred to the Lomcerew, the flowers are 

 nearly those of a BurchelUa, with narrow and elongate persistent 

 calycinal divisions, and a contorted corolla. The fruit is also said 

 to be fleshy ; but the contracted and biparous cymes occupy the 

 axil of the leaves, and in each of the two cells the ellipsoid 

 placentas bear only a few ovules, the upper ascending and the lower 

 descending. Ordinarily one of them assumes a much greater 

 development than the others. It is a shrub of Madagascar with 

 opposite and lanceolate leaves 



Scyphiphora, a glabrous shrubby plant of tropical Asia and 

 Oceania, the habit and foliage of which are nearly those of a 

 Rhizophorea, has pentamerous and oftener tetramerous flowers, with 

 a contorted corolla, an epigynous lobed disk and two or three 

 ovules in each cell. In the latter case, the two upper are often 

 ascending and the lower descending. The fruit is a drupe of 

 two putamens, with false transverse partitions dividing them into 

 monospermous cellules, and the flowers are in pedunculate axillary 

 cymes. 



