248 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
Their number is very variable in the different species, sometimes 
there are only from six to nine,’ elsewhere from ten to fifteen, but 
most usually they are much more numerous, and indefinite. The 
gynæceum is free and superior; it is formed of 
a sessile ovary, frequently ovoid with the upper 
extremity surmounted by a small cone of stig- 
matic tissue, entire or grooved by longitudinal 
fluting but little apparent. The ovary is divided 
into a number of complete or incomplete cells, 
varying from four to eight or ten; and in the in- 
ternal angle of each cell a placenta’ is seen, divided 
into several ramified plates bearing small ovules 
Norantea guianensis, 
LC 
incompletely anatropal, transverse or ascendent, 
and indefinite in number. The fruit is globular 
or nearly so, with suberous fleshy thick pericarp, 
indehiscent or loculicidal towards the base. It 
encloses numerous elongated seeds, containing 
under their coats, which are reticulated without, a 
fleshy embryo with cotyledons often shorter than 
the radicle. Aarcgravia consists of shrubs of 
tropical America, almost always climbing or epiphytal. They 
have two kinds of branches; some sterile bearing distichous sessile 
leaves often provided with two glands, but slightly prominent 
towards the base of the limb which adheres by its inferior face to 
the neighbouring objects; others, free and floriferous, are provided 
with leaves of different forms, alternate, entire, thick coriaceous, and 
exstipulate.’ The inflorescence is in terminal racemes. The prin- 
cipal axis bears a variable number of flowers (collected together 
almost in umbels) pedicellate,* often inserted obliquely at the summit 
of the pedicel, and provided, quite against the flower, with two lateral 
bractlets similar to the sepals. It is prolonged above and bears a 

Fie. 278. 
Bud and its raised 
axile bract (2). 

' Especially in the A. oligandra GRrises. 
(Cat. Pl. Cub., 39), a species of the Antilles, 
where the stamens, when they are eight in 
number, for example, are arranged symme- 
trically with reference to the antero-posterior 
plane of the flower. When the stamens are nume- 
rous they appear sometimes all disposed on the 
same verticil; elsewhere there are several anterior 
to the other, and the flattened filaments being 
partly covered by those of the latter. The true 
symmetry of the androceum is unknown to us. 
2 Which is prolonged above into a short 
channel representing the style, and forms there 
a sort of pointed radiating crest. 
3 Articulated at the base. 
1 The base of the pedicel is articulated. If 
there is no bract at the level of this articulation 
in the fertile pedicels, it is perhaps as we have 
indicated above, that it is elevated to the flower, 
or figures as the anterior sepal. 
