MR. G. BENTHAM ON AFRICAN ANONACE.E. 473 
as 
7. Moxodora, Dun. ; Bentli. et Hook. f. Gen. PI. 26. 
The genus Monodora, entirely African, is one of the most marked among Anonaceoe; 
for although placed in the trihe Mitrephorece, as having tin 4 outer petals spreading, with 
the inner ones connivent over the genitalia, and contracted at the hase as in Mil rcphora 
itself, with the normal anthers of the three first tribes of Anonacea?, yet it is at once 
known by the large undulating and variegated outer petals, united at the base with the 
inner ones in a short ring as in Kexalobus-, and the structure of t lie ovary is so peculiar, 
that it has been often added only at the end of the order as an anomalous genus. In 
my former notes on the Order (Journ. Linn. Soc. v. 72), I showed that the old idea of 
the ovary being monocarpellary, with the whole inner surface lined a\ ith ovules 
the carpels of some Nymphaeaceae, was erroneous, and that the ovary consisted, in fact, 
of a large number of carpels united into a single unilocular ovary with parietal placent, 
as in some Papaveraceae and in several regularly parietal Orders, but that these pla- 
centas are so numerous as to be absolutely contiguous and as it were blended with 
each other. This view has been disputed by Mr. B. Clarke, who, from the fact of the 
stigma of M. myristica being frequently oblique and even split down on one side, argues 
that it is evidently not a compound one, but the ordinary ol dique stigma of a single 
carpel. Its really compound nature, however, which had been already ascertained with- 
out doubt by Dr. Hooker and myself in the M. temufolia, has been fully confirmed bj 
the examination of the species since discovered by our intrepid African collectors, in 
which the stigma is still more distinctly lobed. The fruit also of 31. <j> nuUjlom often 
shows a number of external longitudinal ridges and furrows, indicating the backs and 
sutures of the carpels ; and in a small-fruited species from the Zambesi, of which we 
have unfortunately neither leaves nor flowers, the sutures of the carpels are distinctly 
marked by prominent costae. 
We have now flowering specimens and fruits of four apparently perfectly distinct 
species, and fruits only of two more, which, with the M. angolensis, Welw., which 
unknown to us, carry the number of species to seven. But there 
de 
lifferent 
difficulty in framing diagnoses so as to make it easy to recognize them. All are 
perfectly glabrous, except a few tufts of hairs or partial pubescence on the inner petals ; 
most of them shed their old leaves before the flowering-season, so that the fleers are 
accompanied usually by young membranous half-grown leaves, which it is _ dm | cult t t0 
compare with the full-grown more or less coriaceous and shining ones of the iruitmg 
specimens ; and in the case of two species, fruits alone were found on trees which Jiac 
lost all their leaves. The flowers also, as in many other Anonaceae, are T«y 
in size and shape when they first expand and when they are fully developed lhe most 
tangible characters appear to be derivable from the shape of the inner petals, irom n 
position of the bract, and from the inflorescence on the old wood or on the young shoots. 
Each species has likewise its own peculiar foliage, but variable within limits .ery 
difficult to define. The fruits are also in most cases readily distinguishable Irom eacn 
other in size, shape, or consistence. , e4rU ™™p« 
The arrangement of the seeds in the ripe fruit is very singular. In most of the species 
especially in M. grandiflora, the cavity is entirely filled by a large number of seeds nttea 
3 S Z 
