328 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Close beside Barringtonia are ranged Gareya and Planchonia 

 which ought not, perhaps, to be generically separated, and all which 

 belong to the warmest regions of Asia and the Indian Archipelago. 

 The former have the exterior stamens longer, and with the interior, 

 destitute of anthers, with the undivided embryo of Barringtonia. 

 The latter has the interior staminodes fertile and shorter than the 

 stamens. The embryo has foliaceous and folded cotyledons, and a 

 very long spirally-rolled radicle. Petersia africana, a large tree of 

 Angola, is also said to have nearly all the characters of a Barring- 

 tonia, and especially its flower ; but the alternate leaves are punctuate, 

 and its floral receptacle bears, in the interval of the sepals, four 

 large wings which only grow round the fruit in the form of vertical 

 membranes, semi-orbicular and veined. 1 



The flowers of Gustavia present a great resemblance to those of 

 Barringtonia. The inferior ovary is also lodged in the cavity of a 

 turbinate receptacle the margin of which bears a calyx entire, or 

 lobed, or 4-6-fid, and from five to eight imbricate petals. The stamens, 

 very numerous, inserted round the margin of a circular epigynous 

 disk, are free and all fertile, with a basifixed, elongate anther having 

 two linear cells opening near the summit by a pore or short cleft. 

 The inferior ovary is divided into four, five or six pluriovulate cells, 

 and the indéhiscent, fibrous fruit, encloses a small number of seeds, 

 similar to those of Eugenia. It comprises fine trees or shrubs of 

 tropical America ; the leaves are alternate. 



In Gustavia, the stamens form, above and around the ovary, a 

 crown quite regular. Let these same stamens unite at the base and 

 form a sort of tube, but unequal, because those on one side are 

 longer than those on the other, and we have Cariniana, consisting of 

 fine trees of tropical America, the inferior ovary of which, often 

 trilocular, becomes, besides, quite a peculiar fruit. It is a sort of 



1 With douht we place here the two genera leaves, has the hahit of the Rhizophoreœ. The 



l'a i,, lia ami Somteratia, recently referred hy flowers, 3-8-inerous, have a convex receptacle, 



Bentham and Hooker {Gen. 724, 784), the one with an ovary adnate only in its lower part, 



to anomalous Myrtacece, the other to Lithrarieie. The cells are numerous and multiovulate. 



Firiidia, native of the eastern isles of tropical There is also a very large number of stamens, 



Africa, has 3— 5-merous apetalous flowers, with and the sepals are valvate coriaceous persistent, 



numerous stamens inserted above an inferior The corolla is wanting or reduced to long 



ovary, with alternisepalous cells. In the inter- narrow tongues. The fruit is in great part free, 



nal angle of the latter is found a pluriovulate finally coriaceous, indéhiscent and polysper- 



placenta. The fruit is dry and woody, and the mous. These maritime plants are found on 



leaves are alternate without stipules. Sonneralin, nearly all the tropical shores of the old world, 

 with opposite entire coriaceous and exstipulate 



