348 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Nauclea {Mitragijne) 

 inermis. 



margin, but generally to a small extent. The stamens are of two 

 kinds according as we examine this or that flower with filaments 

 sometimes short and sometimes long, thick and exserted as in 

 Sprucea, the flower of which is of an intensely red colour in most 

 parts. The fruit is a small short capsule, septicidal and loculicidal ; 

 and the seeds, said to be ** winged" in those called SicMngia, have, 

 in Ghimarrhis proper, only a short marginal wing or even almost 

 none. They are trees of tropical America, with opposite leaves, 

 accompanied with stipules ; sometimes very large, sometimes cordate, 

 and sometimes very long attenuated at the base. 



In a group somewhat exceptional have been united Nauclea (fig. 

 344) and some other genera resembhng them in their capituliform 

 inflorescences (in reahty capitules of glome- 

 rules), terminal and oftener axillary, peduncu- 

 late ; and this group has even been raised to 

 the rank of a tribe (Naucleeoi). The flowers 

 have a calyx with folioles of variable form, 

 often claviform, as the bracts and bracteoles 

 between the flowers ; and the corolla, tubular, • 

 most frequently 5-lobed, is imbricate in nearly 

 all the species, or valvate in those separated 

 under the name of Mitragyne. The ovary has 

 two cells in each of which a placenta ordinarily 

 descending bears numerous ovules, which may 

 be reduced to a very small number (2, 3) in certain species of which 

 the genus Adina has been formed. The fruit is drupaceous, but with 

 a very thin exocarp easily separable from the endocarp, which divides 

 into two hard septicidal and loculicidal cocci. The seeds are more 

 or less prolonged to a wing at each end and are furnished with a 

 fleshy albumen.^ 



Fig. 344. Compound 

 fruit. 



1 Adiym may have only two or three de- 

 scending ovules in each cell and the corolla 

 very slightly imbricate or even valvate. In 

 this respect it is intermediate on the one hand 

 between other species of Nauclea and Cepha- 

 lanthus, and on the other hand between Nauclea 

 proper and Mitragyne. We call Micradina the 

 small Chinese species the corolla of which is 

 often valvate and the ovules few. In Adinium, 



another section, represented by a plant of 

 Madagascar, the ovules may be three, but may 

 be more in the same plant. Here the corolla 

 is distinctly imbricate ; but the leaves are 

 verticillate, and the common peduncle, long 

 and slender, bears, at a certain distance below 

 the inflorescence, two or three bracts forming a 

 small involucre. 



