152 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



folioles, free from each other or united helow to an extent generally 

 inconsiderable and imbricate in prefloration. They surround an 

 andrœcium represented by a single stamen. This is formed of a 

 filament primarily straight, instead of curved in prefloration (and 



ArtoC(irpu& incisa. 



Fig. 114. Floriferous and fructiferous branch (A). 



this is the character to which the greatest importance has been 

 attached in distinguishing this series from the preceding), and an 

 anther with two cells, each dehiscing by a longitudinal cleft. In the 

 female flowers there is a concave receptacle, ordinarily very 

 deep, hollowed in the form of pits in the substance of the floral 

 receptacle itself, the margin of which supports a gamosepalous 

 calyx, 1 perforated only at the summit. At the bottom of the hollows 

 is a free gynseeium, formed of a sessile or shortly stipitate ovary, 

 surmounted by an eccentric style the stigmatiferous summit of which 

 is entire, variable in form, or divided sometimes into two or three 

 branches. At first, the dicarpellar gynseeium, 3 like that of the 



1 This is consequently perigynous. At other the summit, with those of the neighbouring 

 times the sepals were supposed hypogynous, flowers, 

 but united in a tube and also welded, except at = Sometimes the number of carpels is three, 



