TERNSTRŒMIACEÆX. 249 
small number of pedicels, terminated by a flower which is but little 
developed, sometimes even quite aborted. In the length of the exte- 
rior edge of these pedicels an adnate bract is seen in the form of a 
narrow elongated sac, claviform or hood-shaped, or like a reversed 
Ruyschia corallina. 

Fie. 281. 
Longitudinal section of flower. 
Fra. 279. 
Bud and its axile bract. 
Fra. 280. 
Flower (2). 
urn, with hollow spur, the bottom turning upwards, pointed or ob- 
tuse, the narrow opening near the base of the pedicel looking down- 
wards and outwards, and the interior surface secreting a sweet or 
bitter’ nectar. From twelve to fifteen species” of Marcyravia have 
been described. 
Beside this genus is placed Norantea (fig. 278) which, with the 
same organs of vegetation and alternate leaves, have flowers all fer- 
tile arranged in racemes or spikes, and all accompanied by an axile 
sacciform bract raised more or less with the pedicel, but not united 
with it by its limb, the opening being first turned outward and 
downward.’ The sexual organs are nearly those of Marcgravia, 
but the verticils of the perianth are pentamerous, and the petals are 

1 Among all the interpretations proposed for 
this sort of ascidia, the only one admissible for 
us appears to be that described by TRIANA and 
PLANCHON in their Prodromus, or in a special 
work, “ Sur les bractées des Marcgraviées,” in- 
serted in volumeix. of Mém. de la Soc. Imp. des 
Se. Nat, de Cherbourg, and where the bract, 
adnate to the sterile pedicel by the upper face of its 
midrib, will have suffered adeformation so that the 
upper face, extremely arched above, would repre- 
sent the convex surface, ‘and its inferior face the 
secreting cavity of the ascidium, and its edges those 
of the opening turned downwards and outwards, 
2L., Spec., ii. 562.—Jacq., Amer., 156, t. 
96.—K., Synops., iv, 234.—Hoox., Exot. F1., 
t. 160.—Grises., Fl. Brit. W.-Ind., 110; Cat, 
Pl. Cub., 39.—TR. & Pz., in Ann. Sc. Nat., sér. 
4, xvii, 360.— Watp., Rep., i. 399; ii. 811; 
v. 146; Ann., i. 129; vii., 360. 
$ Tt is only then that the bract becomes more 
or less ascendent (as in fig. 278), and that the 
opening of the sac which it represents, first 
exterior and inferior, becomes interior and 
superior. 
