Mr. J. Miers on A®xtoxicum. 215 
ceous entire spherical bract, which bursts by laceration from the 
base, and falls off to allow of the expansion of the floral parts: 
we find no other genus in the family possessed of this character. 
The calyx consists of five (rarely six) orbicular concave membra- 
naceous sepals, which are much imbricated in estivation, and 
are formed of close rows of longitudinal cells, all radiating to- 
wards the circumference from the point of attachment ; and they 
therefore easily split in that direction. The petals, always equal 
in number to the sepals, are alternate with them ; they are longer, 
obovate, narrowed towards the base, with an internal raised keel 
and undulating crispate margins; in the female plant they are 
quincuncially imbricated in estivation; in the male flower the 
three internal petals have their apices much inflected and pli- 
cated together,—in all which respects they closely resemble those 
of Villaresia. The stamens, in both sexes, usually five (rarely six), 
alternate with the petals and with as many fleshy glandular pro- 
cesses, all being hypogynous around the ovary. Whenever the 
flower is abnormally 6-merous, the sixth sepal, petal, stamen, and 
gland are always smaller, sometimes almost rudimentary ; and in 
all cases these are forced out of the concentric serial lines by crowd- 
ing, so that the perfect symmetry of the parts becomes thus 
somewhat deranged, showing the normal structure to be 5-me- 
rous, and that it only becomes 6-merous by a kind of monstrous 
growth. In order to ascertain the nature of the glandular pro- 
cesses, it is necessary to particularize their structure. They are 
described by Sir Wm. Hooker as a nectary,—a term too ambi- 
guous in its meaning; they appear to me sterile stamens, or 
staminodes ; for they alternate with the filaments, and seem to 
stand in the same whorl; they are somewhat deltoid in form in 
the g, tapering downward to the point of their attachment round 
the base of the small central sterile ovary, are almost unequally 
2-lipped and slightly concave at the summit, each lip bemg 
emarginated; from their form, they appear somewhat radiately 
expanded, and, as well as the stamens, are quite glabrous, leaving 
in the centre the depressed disk-shaped ovary, which is covered 
with lepidote scales, similar to those which invest the bract and 
leaves. These staminodes, in the 9 flower, are more compressed, 
simply 2-lobed in the summit, and, like the stamens, stand erect, 
pressed against the ovary; they cannot be considered as the 
lobes of a disk, because they are perfectly free and hypogynously 
attached, alternating with the stamens round the base of the 
ovary. 
The filaments in the d flowers are semiterete, thick, and fleshy, 
divaricating outwards at the point of their hypogynous attach- 
ment, but gradually curve inwards, so that the anthers meet in 
a connate form in the centre: the anthers are nearly globular, 
