244 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
considerable number of stamens, only united quite at their base into 
a very short ring, with filaments in other respects free, and two- 
celled anthers, at first introrse, versatile, inserted at the summit of 
the filament by a slightly glandular 
TROT EE extremity dehiscing by two longi- 
tudinal clefts. The gynæceum is 
superior, formed of an ovary with 
two, three, more rarely four cells, of 
which two are lateral, surmounted 
by a style with capitate or trifid 
stigmatiferous extremity. In the 
internal angle of each cell a large 
placenta is seen, bearing an indefinite 
number of ascendent, imbricated 

Fig. 267. 
Longitudinal section of flower. ovules, arranged In numerous series. 
The fruit is a capsule,-septicidal in 
its upper part, with columella nil or short, and a large number of 
linear seeds, the coats of which enclose a straight exalbuminous 
embryo. Bonnetia consists of trees of South America. Four or five 
species’ of them are known. The leaves are glabrous, subsessile, 
alternate, with edges involute in vernation. The flowers are disposed 
in the axil of the superior leaves, upon a peduncle which bears a 
single flower, or three, forming a cyme, or a larger number, each 
placed in the axil of a bract, sometimes caducous, sometimes per- 
sistent, or even developed into a kind of involucre. 
Beside Bonnetia are placed Avelmeyera and Archytea, distinguished 
from them: the former by its more elongated anthers and descen- 
dent ovules, arranged in two vertical series, flattened into the com- 
mencement of a wing in the lower part, where they are imbricated 
among themselves; the latter, by its stamens united into five 
very distinct bundles, and by its capsule dehiscing from below 
upwards. 
Caraipa has also the same flowers, with stamens, the anther of 
which is introrse, short, and surmounted by a gland, often concave 
at the apex, and three ovary cells, each containing two descendent 
ovules, more rarely three or four, with exterior and superior micropyle. 

À AS. H, Fl. Bras. Mer., i. 301.—Touncz., in Bull. Mose. (1858), i, 246.—BENTH., in Journ. 
Linn, Soc., v. 61.—Watv., Rep., i. 373 ; ii. 801; Ann., vii. 375. 
