NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



in tropical "Western Africa ; the others, seven or eight in number,' 

 iuluibit tlie whole of tropical America. 



VII. PHYLLANTIIUS SERIES. 



Phijllanlhm^ the best known genus of this series, is not the most 

 complete type. This is found to be represented by other ^^lants, 

 such, for instance, as Wichindia defjans'^ (fig. 230-2.33), a shrub 

 from the Seychelles and neighbouring isles, which has monœcious 



Wiel/india ihgnii 



Fig. 230. Male flower, Fig. 231. Male flower, Fig. 233. Female flower, Fig. 232. Female flower, 

 diagram. longitudinal section (f). longitudinal section. diagram. 



flowers, with a convex receptacle. It bears a calyx of five sepals, 

 slightly united at the base, arranged in quincuucial pnx'floration 

 in the bud, and a corolla of five free, imbricated, alternate petals. 

 Farther in is found a cupular disk, with five but slightly prominent ^ 

 alternipetalous angles. The receptacle afterwards rises in a thick 

 central column which supports five alternipetalous stamens, whose 

 nearly sessile anthers are introrse in the bud, afterwards reflexed 

 outwardly at anthesis, and have two cells deshiscing by longitudinal 

 clefts. The column is terminated by a body with five oppositi- 

 petalous branches, representing the divisions of a rudimentary 

 gynseceum. In the female flowers, within the perianth and disk, 

 similar to those of the male flo^\'er, is seen a fertile gynceceum, the 

 ovary having five cells superposed to the petals and surmounted by 

 a style with five stigmatiferous, bi-lobed, reflexed branches. In the 



1 PiErr. et Endl. Nor. Gen. it Spec.'vi. t. 246, -' H. I3n. Mnplwrbiac. 568, t. 22, fig. 6-10 ; in 



fig. 2. — Onv. Fl. trop. Afi: i. 344.— H. Bn. in AiJaiisoiiin, ii. 32. — Saria elegaiis M. Ako. in 



Adansonia, xi. 111. note. — Walp. Rep. i. .549 ; Liiinaa, xxxii. 78 ; Prodr. 228, 

 ii. 829 ; v. 408 ; A»}i. iv. 442. ^ Sometimes hardly distinct. 



