12 



N. Ord. MENISPERMACE^E. 

 Tribe Heterocliniea. 



Genus Tinospora,* Miers. B. & H., Gen., i, p. 34; Miers, 1. c., p. 29; 

 Baill., iii, p. 13. Species 11, natives of Asia, Africa, and Australia, 

 in the tropics. 



12. Tinospora COrdifolia, Miers in Ann. Nat. Hist., ser. 2, vii, 



p. 38 (1851). 



Gulancha (Hindustani). 



Syn. Menispermum cordifolium, Willd. Cocculus cordifolius, and 

 C. convolvulaceus, DC. 



Figures. Rheede, Hort. Malab., vii, t. 21 ; Wight, Ic. Plant. Ind., ii, 

 tt. 485, 486 ; Miers, Contrib. Bot., iii, t. 91. 



Description. A woody climber, with perennial stems reaching 

 2 inches in diameter, with a thick, soft, warted bark, the younger 

 branches succulent with the bark smooth, giving out adventitious 

 roots sometimes many yards in length and excessively slender, 

 which lengthen downwards and at last reach the soil. Leaves 

 alternate, on long flexuose petioles, spreading, 2 4 inches long, 

 roundish-ovate, entire, cordate at the base, acute at the apex, quite 

 smooth, thin, somewhat glaucous beneath. Flowers dioecious, 

 pedicellate, inconspicuous, yellow, in short, axillary, long-stalked 

 racemes, the male in small fascicles, the female solitary, bracts 

 minute. Male flowers : Sepals 6 in two rows of 3 each, the outer 

 short, roundish, the inner twice as long, broadly obovate, concave, 

 smooth ; petals 6, opposite the sepals, and about half the length of 

 the inner ones, clawed below, somewhat 3-lobed above, with the 

 lateral lobes involute ; stamens 6, longer than the petals, imme- 

 diately in front of which they stand and by which they are 

 partially enwrapped, filaments much thickened at the end, anther- 

 cells oblong, widely separated below; no rudiment of carpels. 

 Female flowers : Sepals as in the male ; petals oblong- spathulate ; 



* Name from ref j/o, to spread or extend, and viropa, seed ; from the extreme 

 divarication of the cotyledons and the further extension of the endosperm 

 curving round the hollow process of the putanjen. 



