12 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
or suffrutescent, with alternate exstipulate leaves, and numerous 
flowers disposed in large composite much ramified and terminal 
racemes.’ 
The flowers of Bougainvillea’ (figs. 18-20) are tubular like those of 
Boldoa and still longer. Their summit is dilated a little into a limb 
Bougainvillea spectabilis. 









Fie. 20. 
Sexual organs. 

Fia. 18. 
Flower and its bract. Inflorescence. 
with five teeth, valvate-induplicate in the bud. The androceum is 
formed of seven or eight included stamens, with slender filaments 
monadelphous at the base (fig. 20). Their gynæceum is that of the 
Nyctaginacee generally, and their slender style is obtuse or swollen 
into the shape of a club towards its stigmatiferous apex.’ But what 
particularly distinguishes this genus, is that its flowers are surrounded 
by three petaloid leaves (figs. 18, 19), which have the form and figure 
of cauline leaves and only differ from them in colour and consistency. 
In Bougainvillea proper, each of these larger bracts has in its axil a 
flower which is connate with it in a variable portion of its mid-nerve ; 
while in 7ricycla,' generally made a distinct genus, there is only one 

1 Reichenbachia hirsuta might doubtless be 
considered as a section of this genus. Reichen- 
bachia hirsuta (SPRING., in Bull. Soc. Philom. 
(1823), 54, t. 1.—ExDpxz., Gen.,n. 2009.—CHors., 
Prodr., 439, n. 10). It is a Columbian plant 
which has the organs of vegetation and the 
flowers of Boldoa, but its diandrous androceum 
and the style are included. 
2 Cuos., Prodr., 437.—Bugainvillea Com- 
MERS., ex J., in Ann. Mus., ii. 275; Gen., 91.— 
GweRIN., Fruct., iii. 206, t. 216—Lamx., JIL, 
t. 249.—Enpz., Gen. n. 2008.—ScHNIZL., 
Iconog., n. 104.—DUuCHATRE, in Ann, Sc. Nat., 
sér, 3, ix. 281, t. 16, 17.—Cuots., Prodr., 437.— 
Josepha VErxoz., El, Flum., iv. t. 16. 
3 The thickened short funicle forms a kind of 
obturator to the ovule, 
4 Cay., Zc. Rar., vi. 79, t. 598; in Ann. 
