PHYTOLACCACEÆ. 25 
flowers on one and the same stem. Their number is rarely less, and 
sometimes greater in the plants cultivated in gardens. Each is com- 
posed of a unilocular ovary surmounted by an independent style, 
whose extremity, a little attenuated and bent outwards, is charged 
with stigmatic papille. 
In the internal angle of each ovary, and close to its base is found 
a placenta on which is inserted a single campylotropal ascending 
ovule, with the micropyle directed downwards and outwards.! In 
the fruit, accompanied at the base by the persistent perianth,’ and 
which is entirely fleshy and pulpy, the carpels are little distinct 
except quite close to the apex. Each encloses a single seed con- 
taining under its thick coats a farinaceous albumen surrounded by 
an almost annular fornicate embryo, with flattened cotyledons adher- 
ing one to the other by their internal surface, and a conical 
radicle directed downwards (fig. 27). P. decandra is a perennial 
herb, found in most of the temperate regions of the globe. The 
root is a thick taproot (fig. 28). The stems are hollow, with 
alternate simple, petiolate, exstipulate leaves. Its flowers are arranged 
in leaf-opposed racemes, each placed in the axil of a bract, and ac- 
companied by two sterile lateral bractlets, elevated to a variable 
height upon the pedicel. 
In other species of the genus Phyfolacca, the number of stamens 
is sometimes less than ten, because two, three or even five sepals 
have only one stamen before them instead of a pair. In others this 
number rises as high as fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five because inside 
these five groups of alternisepalous stamens there are five others 
alternate with them, each formed of one, two or three pieces.’? In 
certain species composing the genus Pircunia, the carpels remain free 
in their whole extent, or nearly so, even in the fruit, and their 
consistence is less fleshy. Their number may rise to twelve or 
fifteen, because some of them are reduplicate like the stamens. 
Some species are frutescent, arborescent, sometimes climbing ; 
and one of them, which is a moderately large tree, has dicecious 
flowers." 

1 Tt has two coats. 3 Payer, Organog., 304. 
2 Green at first, it takes gradually a reddish 4 P. dioica L., Spec., 632, n. 4.—Pircunia 
tint. dioica Mog., Prodr., 30, n. 5. 
