276 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



stipules, the organisation of their corolla and stamens, their style, 

 analogous to that of the Cornaceœ, except in Anisophylkr.a, which 

 has nearly all the characters of the Combretece, but whose singular 

 leaves and embryo with macropod radicle are very distinct. The 

 closest affinities of the Combretece appear, as we have seen, 1 to be 

 those which ally them to the Quercineœ. The female flower of a 

 Chestnut, with its inferior ovary and the receptacular dilatation 

 which surmounts it, with its epigynous stamens and descending ovules 

 with exterior micropyle, appears to us altogether that of a Terminalia 

 whose placentary partitions, always incomplete, are somewhat more 

 advanced towards the axis of an ovary primarily unilocular in both 

 cases. The exceptional cupule of the Quercineœ, so characteristic, 

 is not found in the whole family of the Castaneaceœ, depending only 

 upon a modification in the form of certain organs of vegetation, and 

 not upon the organisation of the flower itself. The true place of the 

 Combretacece appears to us then to be between the Quercineœ, the 

 Araliaceœ, the Onagrariaceœ, and the Cornaceœ. 



The Combretece and Alangicœ are plants of tropical countries. The 

 latter are confined to Asia, Africa, and Oceania ; the former are 

 common to both worlds. Quisqualis, Macropteranthes, Guiera, and 

 Calycoptcris, belong only to the old world ; but the two principal 

 genera, Combretum and Terminalia, are distributed, unequally 

 indeed, between Asia, Africa, and America. Lnmitit::er«, Laguncu- 

 laria, and Conocarjms," are among those curious littoral plants 

 which, like the Mangroves, develope themselves in the brackish 

 waters of widely distant tropical shores. The first has been observed 

 only in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, but the two latter are met with, 

 likewise, in South America and tropical Africa. The JVyssea; on the 

 other hand, are trees of temperate regions. In North America Nyssa 

 inhabits the most southern parts, Mexico and the United States. In 

 India and Java it grows in small numbers on the mountains. 

 Camptotheca and Davidia belong to eastern Tibet. 



Uses. — Like the Quercineœ, to which we have several times com- 

 pared them, these plants have generally an astringent bark and fruit. 



1 See page 249. - Vulg. Mangliersjlibmtiers. 



