354 Natural history of plants. 



Asia, are, like the Glennieas^ closely allied, by their foliage and fruit, 

 to Sapindus aud Nephelium ; but they have, with the entire and indé- 

 hiscent fruit of Glenniea^ the calyx with hardly imbricate short 

 divisions of Nephelium, and not the larger sepals, free and distinctly 

 imbricate of Sapmdiis or Euphoria. These sepals are again met 

 with in Melicocca (fig. 363, 364), trees from tropical America, whose 

 indéhiscent fi'uit is nearly that of Talisia and Iccaniodisctis, of which 

 the regular flowers have the petals, but without the bearded interior 

 plate of Talisia, and the nearly equal stamens with extrorse anthers. 



Melicocca bijugu. 



Akctrijoit e.rcehum. 



Fig. 363. Flower (|). Fig. 364. Longitudinal section of flower. 



Beside the preceding genera, but rather doubtfully, we place three 

 exceptional types having the pinnate leaves and solitary ovules 

 of Melicocca and Schleichera, with the mi- 

 cropyle directed downwards and out- 

 wards ; the Hiiertcas, trees from Peru and 

 Antilles, whose flowers have five petals, 

 but whose two ovary cells are incomplete, 

 the disk having the five glands inter- 

 posed to the stamens, not exterior ; the 

 Alcctryons (fig. 365), trees from New 

 Zealand, whose flowers are apetalous, 

 with a gynasceum and fruit reduced to a 

 single carjjel, and whose stamens are 

 neither exterior nor interior to the disk, 

 but encircled at their base by the nearly 

 . annular lobes ; Eriandrostachys, a shrub 

 from Madagascar, having long male 

 spikes loaded with glomerules, in which the sepals, five or six in 

 number, are arranged with great regularity around the disk and 

 the eight stamens interior to it, but forming an irregular envelope 

 because they are very unequal, the outer ones being short, thick, 



Fig. 36(3. Longitudinal sec- 

 tion of fruit (°). 



