334 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



BiJchia, in tropical Oceania, is the counterpart of Portlandia ; it 

 has 4, 5-merous flowers with a straight or curved corolla, highly 

 reduplicate. The tetragonal ovary, surmounted by a style the two 

 slender branches of which are spirally twisted, contains two cells, 

 the placenta of which, on transverse section, is T-shaped with 

 branches more or less revolute bearing ovules on one or both faces. 

 The fruit is a septicidal capsule, the exocarp of which, thin or 

 fibrous, finally separates from the hard and thin endocarp, and the 

 seeds are compressed or bordered with a thick wing. They are 

 shrubs with large interpetiolar stipules, flowers solitary or in 

 corymbiform c^^mes, axillary or terminal. Morierina, a shrub of New 

 Caledonia, differs little from Bikkia : it has the same habit and 

 foliage ; compound and corymbiform terminal cymes ; a short calyx 

 with five teeth; a- long and straight corolla with elongate valvate 

 lobes ; stamens inserted at the bottom of the corolla and mona- 

 delphous at the base ; numerous imbricate ovules, the lower covering 

 the upper ; a style with stigmatiferous extremity scarcely sloped ; 

 a thick conical disk ; a polyspermous capsule, and numerous seeds 

 with coat dilated to a thick wing. 



Condaminea, which has given name to a part of this series 

 (Gondaniinece) , has also a valvate coriaceous short bell-shaped corolla, 

 surrounded by a calyx which separates circularly at the base ; five 

 dorsifixed anthers, opening by longitudinal clefts, and a turbinate 

 capsule, loculicidal from top to bottom, having numerous wedge- 

 shaped seeds, with reticulate testa. They are trees and shrubs of 

 western tropical America, with large opposite leaves, bipartite 

 intrapetiolar stipules, flow^ers in compound or corymbiform peduncu- 

 late cymes. Paistia has flowers similar to those of Condaminea, but 

 wdth a short and persistent calyx, a longer and narrower corolla, 

 anthers opening only at the summit by pores or short clefts, basifixed 

 and not dorsifixed. They are trees of tropical America whose 

 inflorescences are large terminal and compound clusters of cymes. 

 PinckneTja (fig. 331) has nearly the same valvate tubular and elongate 

 corolla, five stamens inserted lower, with versatile anthers; but the 

 calyx has dissimilar divisions ; three or four of them are narrow, 

 pointed ; one or two are dilated to a broad coloured petiolate layer. 

 In those named Pogonopus, the corolla, instead of being tomentose 

 internally, is glabrous. The fruit is ovoid, whilst in the tnie 

 Pinchieya it is more globular and subdidymous. They are shrubs o: 



H 



