66 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



adheres. The Colubrinas are common to all tropical countries ; they 

 are erect or climbing shrubs, unarmed, with leaves almost constantly 

 alternate. Cormonema, prickly trees or shrubs of Brazil, with alternate 

 leaves and axillary cymes, have the flower and fruit of Colubrina, 

 from which perhaps they ought not to be generically separated. 

 They can always be easily distinguished at the first glance by the 

 presence of two sessile glands at the base of the foliar limb. Alphi- 

 tonia has nearly the flowers of Colubrina, with the ovary in great 

 part inferior and the fruit sunk to nearly the middle in the recepta- 

 cular cup. The mesocarp sometimes remains thin and dry to the end ; 

 but it often thickens and becomes fleshy or suberose. In any case 

 it finally separates into cocci dehiscing internally which, like those of 

 the Emmcnospcrma and of some Colubrina, are basally detached from 

 the receptacle on which the seeds remain. The latter are red and 

 large ; but, in the species producing a drupaceous fruit, they are 

 partly enveloped in a well developed aril. The Alphitonias are 

 Oceanian, arborescent, nearly always covered with a ferruginous or 

 whitish down, rarely glabrous ; they have alternate leaves and multi- 

 floral cymes, axillary or terminal. 



Berchemia, erect or climbing shrubs from the warm regions of Asia, 

 Africa, and America, with the general organisation of the precediug 

 genera and the ovary inferiorly adherent, presents however these 



differences. The receptacle 

 is in form a shallow cup, or 

 nearly plane, the margin 

 of which bears the perianth 

 aud andrcecium. The latter 

 are therefore sometimes 

 nearly hypogynous. The 

 disk which surrounds the 

 base of the ovary, instead 

 of being a thin layer covering the coats of the receptacle, rises in the 

 form of a well or sack the upper opening of which is transversed by 

 the style. The flowers are disposed in clusters of cymes, axillary or 

 terminal and ramified, and the drupaceous fruit with bilocular stone, 

 is accompanied at its base by the receptacular cupule. Bageretia, 

 found in the same regions (except Africa), has also a disk freely 

 raised between the ovary and the receptacle, the free margin of which 



Fig. 47. Long. eect. of flower. Fig. 46. Flower (a). 



