14 



N. Ord. MENISPERMACE^. 

 Tribe Heterocliniece. 



Genus Anamirta,* Colebrooke. B. & H. Gen., i, p. 35 ; BailL, 

 Hist. PL, iii, p. 40; Miers, Contrib., iii, p. 49. Species 7 

 (Miers), natives of India and the Malayan Islands. 





14. Anamirta paniculata, Colebrooke, in Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond., 



xiii, p. 66 (1822). 



" Cocculus^ indicus." 



Syn. Menisperinum Cocculus, Linn, (in part). M. heteroclitum, Roxb. ; 

 Anamirta Cocculus, Wight & Am. Cocculus suberosus, DC. 



Figures. Nees, tt. 365, 366; Berg & Sch., 1. 14 a (fruit) ; Rheede, Hort. 

 Malab., vii, t. 1 ; Ann. des Sc. Naturelles, ser. 2, ii, t. 3; Miers, 1. c., 

 t. 97 (fruit). 



Description. A large woody twiner, with thick branches ; bark 

 deeply corrugated, corky, grey. Leaves alternate, on long stalks, 

 which are thickened at both ends and prehensile, blade sub- 

 coriaceous, varying from 4 to 8 inches long, ovate or cordate- 

 ovate, acute, smooth and pale green above, whitish below with 

 tufts of hair in the axils of the prominent veins, margin nearly 

 entire. Flowers small, dioecious, arranged in pendulous compound 

 racemes 8 to 12 or more inches long, springing from the old 

 wood, on short, thick, divaricated pedicles, rachis smooth. Male 

 flowers : sepals 6 imbricate, surrounded at the base with 2 or 

 3 small bracts, ovate, thin, spreading ; petals none ; stamens 

 numerous, closely crowded on a shortly stalked globose receptacle, 

 so as to form a round mass in the centre of the flower, filaments 

 almost absent, anthers 4-celled. Female flowers : sepals as in the 

 male ; petals none ; stamens represented by a hypogynous ring of 

 10 very small bifid fleshy staminodes united below; carpels 5, 

 rarely 4 (or 3 ?), supported on a short gynophore, which divides 



* Anamirta, taken " from an Indian term contrasting it with a name of a 

 common Menispermum." 



f Cocculus, the mediaeval name for these fruits; from the Italian coccola, a 

 small berry. 



