RUB I AC E^. 



317 



In Bertiera, of doubtful place, the flowers have an ovary with two 

 multiovulate cells, a calyx with short teeth or none and a corolla 

 with five contorted lobes. Sometimes one of the latter becomes 

 quite covered and another covering by its two margins. The introrse 

 anthers are surmounted by a pointed apicule of the connective. 

 But the ovules are borne on an enlarged placenta, furnished with a 

 rather long foot (hke that of some Oldenlandiece) , and the flowers 

 are grouped in cymes and these often in pendent clusters. They 

 are trees or shrubs, with oppo- 

 site leaves and connate sti- Sameiia patens, 

 pules, from tropical Africa and 

 America.^ 



HameUa (fig. 306, 307), of 

 which has been made a tribe 

 [Eameliece) of this family, ap- 

 proach the preceding types in 

 their fleshy fruit and the general 

 organiza,tion of their flower ; but 

 the prefloration of the corolla 

 is diff*erent. The lobes of the 

 very short limb are imbricate so 

 that one is covered by its two 

 margins. The elongate tube of 

 the latter is angular, and the 

 ovary, surmounted by a fusiform 

 style, has as many cells as there 

 are lobes in the corolla and are 

 superposed to them, or only two 



to four cells. The fruit is a polyspermous berry. Hamelia com- 

 prises glabrous or pubescent shrubs of tropical and subtropical 

 America. The leaves are opposite or oftener verticillate, and the 

 flowers are in terminal corymbs of uniparous cymes. 



Bothriospora conjmhosa, a shrub of northern Brazil, has also an 

 imbricate corolla, scarcely irregular. The four or five divisions of 

 its calyx are imbricate and membranous. The ovary has four or five 

 multiovulate cells and is surmounted by a style the summit of which 



Fig. 306. Bud (f). 



Fig. 307. Long, 

 sect, of flower. 



^ Here perhaps should be placed the genus leave provisionally among the types of uncer- 

 Zuccaniiia, unknown to us and which we shall tain place (see p. 364). 



