ISAPINDACE.^. 371 



the external coat criistaceous and smooth, and a thick fleshy albumen 

 surrounding a small green embryo, with oval linear cotyledons, and 

 radicle truncate or swollen at the apex. The Houeyflowers are 

 glabrous shrubs, glaucous, often odorous, with herbaceous branches, 

 covered with alternate imparipinnate leaves, whose petiole is accom- 

 panied at its base by two foliaceous stipules, free and lateral or con- 

 nate in a large membranous intra-axillary plate. The folioles are 

 opposite, dentate, unsymmetrical at the base. The flowers are col- 

 lected in axillary and terminal clusters, each situated in the axil of 

 a bract. Four species^ are known, natives of the Cape of Good 

 Hope, one or two having been introduced into the majority of tro- 

 pical countries. 



Beside the Houeyflowers are placed : Bersama^ consisting of trees 

 and shrubs with pinnate leaves, from tropical and southern Africa, 

 having very nearly the same flower, but a less irregular receptacle, 

 larger and imbricate petals, four free or diadelphous stamens and four 

 or five ovary cells, each containing a single ascendent ovule, nearly 

 basilar, with the micropyle inferior and exterior ; and Grey la., a shrub 

 from South Africa, with simple leaves, nearly entire or sublobate, 

 exstipulate, having almost the perianth of Bersama, ten stamens 

 interior to a cupola-shaped disk, and an ovary with five cells, often 

 incomplete or multiovulate. The fruit is septicidal, and separates 

 at maturity into five polyspermous follicles. 



VII? AITONIA SERIES. 



In the genus Aitonia^ assigned frequently to other families, the 

 tetramerous flowers (fig. 414, 415) are hermaphi-odite and regular. 

 The sepals, united below, are imbricate and fall early. The alter- 

 nate petals, much longer, are twisted or, more rarely, imbricate. The 

 stamens are hypogynous, arranged on two verticels of four each. The 

 monadelphous filaments are united in a tube below, then free, ex- 

 serted, each surmounted by a bilocular introrse anther, dehiscent by 

 two longitudinal clefts. The gynseceum is free, formed of an ovary 



' Vahl, Symb. Bot. iii. 85.— Pappe, Fl. Cap. = L. pil. Siippl. 303 (nee Foest.)-— A. Jvss. 



Med. Prodr. 6.— Pl. loc. cit. 414, t. 20.— Harv. in Mem. Mm. xix. 186.- Don, Miiib. New Phil. 



et SotiD. Fl. Cap. i. 367.— -Bo*. Jie^. t. 15.— Bot. Jimrn. xiii. 242.— Endl. Geii. n. 5548 [Meliaceis 



Mag. t. 301.— Walp. Re<j. i. 498; Ann. vii. afi'.).— B. H. Cm. 411. n. 68. 

 638. 



