48 NATURAL HISTORY VF PLANTS. *" 



would seem, to be ascribed to Ilugonia, but in which the young seeds 

 are nearly superj)Osed, instead of being collateral, and capped by a 

 common obturator. Finally in the two American species of Fhtyonia 

 destitute of hooks, like most of these fi'om Xew Caledonia, the hairs on 

 the internal face of the petals, but little developed in the latter, are 

 here much longer and more numerous, whence the origin of the 

 name Hebepetalum^ considered as forming a special genus. The 

 bases of the petals, already thick and fleshy in the New Caledonian 

 species, become here more prominent within, and may even represent 

 a kind of middle crest or basilar scale. The presence of this thicken- 

 ing does not, however, suffice to characterise a genus, any more than 

 does the prominent alternipetalous glands of the androceum tube, 

 which characters are found in some Asiatic species of Hugonia. 

 This, with its three sections, - comprises about twenty species.^ 



OchthocosHS,^ allied to Huffonia, is distinguished from it by its 

 perianth persisting round the fruit, its single style, and its cby septi- 

 cidal pericarp. Three species are known : one American,^ whose 

 dry petals are not very thick, and whose ripe carpels are, like those 

 of the Flaxes, divided by a false partition ; the second,^ a native of 

 tropical western Afi-ica, whose ovary cells present a centripetal rudi- 

 ment of a false partition, and whose petals thicken and harden round 

 the capsule. In the third,^ the type of a genus FhyNocosmics,^ the 

 petals become hard, but the false partition is said to disappear. All 

 these plants are frutescent, glabrous, with alternate leaves, the 

 stipules and flowers grouped in cymes on small axillary branches. 



In another secondary group," formed by Ixonanfhcs,^^ the ovary 



1 Benth. Ocii. 244, n. 9. * 0. Sessilifloria H. Bn. he. cit. — Phyllocnsmiis 



sessiliform Ol.iv. Fl. Trop. Jfr. i. 273, n. 2. 



(1. Mi/sl<i.r (Ray). ; y africaiius Hook. f. in Booh. Icon. t. 773 ; 



s' Bura!Z fp^t ^'^''''' ^'^' '^ ^^-Walp. An,,, i. I2i.-Pe„ta. 



A. inauKUia (^i l.; ^,,^^„ leoncnsis Turcz. in Hull. Mose. xxvi (1863), 



4. Sarcutheca (Bl.). gn, 



5. J,4<.^rf«/««» (Benth.). s'j,_ „f,.ica,ms Kl. in Abh. d. Se,!. Acad. 



^ Cav. _»«.«. iii. 177, t. 73.— Buck. Dec. i. t. 8. (1856), 232.— Oliv. loc. eit. n. 1.— Walp. Ann. 



9.— Wight et Arn. Proih: i. 72.— Wight, III. i. vii. 464. 



32.— Oliv. Fl. Tiop. Afr. i. 270.— Wai.p. Ann. » Ixonanthcce {Llneœ trib. 4 B. H. (kn. 242, 



i. 96; ii. 136, 137. 245). 



■• Benth. in ifooA. /^ow^. /6M)-«. ii. 366. — B. H. '" Jack, jI/«;. Misc. ex. Hook. C'oinp. to Hut. 



am. 245, n. 12.— H. Bn. in Adanaonia, x. 336. Ma^. i. 154.— B. H. Gen. 245, n. 14.- H. Bx. in 



' 0. Soraimce Benth. loc. cit. — ^Walp. Hep. v. Adansonia x. 367. — Ixiontinthes Endi,. Gen. n. 



135. 5557. — Emnieiiant/ni» Hook, et Arn. in Heech. 



