Watson: THE GENUS HELIOCARPUS 115 
determined from the fruit, for the length of the ovarian stipe 
in even a mature flower is the same in both groups. After 
anthesis the stipe in the first group elongates, but in the second 
group no such elongation takes place. 
CHARACTERS OF THE GENUS HELIOCARPUS 
Trees or shrubs with stellate pubescence. Leaves simple, 
integral or lobed, petiolate, palmately veined. Inflorescence a 
panicle. Flowers polygamous or dioecious, four- or five-merous, 
sometimes apetalous, small, not more than 10 mm. long or broad, 
regular. Sepals valvate, acute, densely stellate, flat or hooded, 
often with a small appendage near the apex behind the hood. 
Petals alternate with the sepals, narrow, glandular, more or less 
pubescent toward the base. Receptacle with glands opposite 
the petals. Stamens fourtenn to forty, attached to the re- 
ceptacle below the ovary, anthers introrse, opening by longi- 
tudinal slits, stamens often reduced to sterile filaments in pistil- 
late flowers. Ovary wholly superior, more or less compressed, 
hairs on the compressed edge usually longer, two-celled, each 
cell with two ovules separated by a false partition. Style erect, 
filiform, not more than six or seven times the length of the ovary, 
bifid, the lobes spreading, simple and acute, or themselves 
lobed. Fruit indehiscent, compressed, with a fringe of plumose 
hairs in two series around the compressed edge. 
Key to the species 
Fruit sessile. 
Leaves glabrous both sides or not more than 
slightly pubescent beneat 
Faces of fruit rugose, ceoctilally glabrous, rays 
thinly plumose. 1. H. glanduliferus. 
Faces of fruit more or less pubescent. 
Faces slightly tomentose with some plumose 
hairs. 2. H. pallidus. 
Faces not plumose, but short appressed 
stellate. 
Fruit oval, rays longer than diameter of the 
dark. 3. H. occidentalis. 
F ruit coblocian, rays shorter than diameter 
of the body. 4- 
Leaves more or less pubescent both sides, but es- 
pecially beneath. 
Mature leaves integral. 
H. polyandrus. 
