382 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
above, according to their internal angle, and gaping within the 
summit, while their bases are united by means of the receptacle then 
become dry and pentagonal. The seeds, variable in number, are 
arched and triangular ; they contain under their coats a fleshy oily 
albumen surrounding a large embryo with fleshy conical radicle. The 
Rues are perennial herbs or undershrubs. All their parts are endowed 
with a penetrating, often disagreeable odour, proceeding from trans- 
lucid reservoirs of essential oil, more or less prominent, with which 
all the organs are charged. 'The leaves are alternate compound tri- 
foliolate, pinnatisect or decompound, exstipulate.' 
Their flowers are disposed at the summit of the 
branches in cymes, pluriparous at the commence- 
ment, and generally becoming uniparous towards 
the circumference. In the Rues proper it is fre- 
quently the case that the central flower of the cyme 
is pentamerous ; the others, although organized the 
same, becoming tetramerous. In those constituting 
Haplophyllum, the leaves are generally simple ;* the 
petals entire; the flowers almost constantly pentamerous ; and the 
ovules few in number in each carpel. In Ruta pinnata the ovary 
is divided into four or five cells through almost the whole height ; 
and the fruit only opens incompletely at the summit (fig. 398), or 
even not at all. Thus formed, the genus Rue comprehends some 
forty species,’ all natives of the Mediterranean region and of centro- 
western Asia. 
In Ruta albiflora, à small species of cool India and Japan, the 
delicate leaves of which are bipinnate, the flowers are white and 
small, united in a raceme of terminal cymes, tetramerous with four 
or six stamens, and the gynæceum supported by a slender foot 
Ruta (Ruteria) pinnata. 

Fie. 398. 
Fruit dehiscent at 
summit (2). 
1 In certain species the two inferior lobes of 
the leaf inserted quite against the branch seem 
to take the place of these organs, 
2 A. Juss., in Mém. Mus., xii. 464, t. 17, 
fig. 10 (Aplophyllum).—DrtEss., Ie. Sel., iii. 
t. 43, 44.—Enpu., Gen., n. 6028. — Spacn, 
Consp. Gen. Haplophyllum (in Ann. Sc. Nat, 
sér. 3, xi. 174). 
3 Sometimes trisect; very rarely pinnatisect, 
4 L. x, Suppl., 232.—DC., Prodr., n. 1.— 
Bot. Reg., t. 307.— Ruteria pinnata MEDIK.— 
Desmophyllum pinnatum WxBz, Phyt. Canar., 
i, 14. 
5 Reions., Le. Fl. Germ. v. t. 155-157; 
Pl. Crit., vii. 786-790.—Jaca., Ic. Rar., t. 76. 
—Duuam.,, Arbr., ii. t. 61.— SiBTH., Fl. Grae., 
t. 8368-370.—Trn., FU, Neap., t. 36.—Gren, & 
Gopx., Fl. de Fr., i. 328.—Laxitt., Syr., Dec. 
i, t.14.—Jaus; & Spxcu, JL Pl. Or; i, t. 
261-270 (Haplophyllum).—Botiss., Fl. Or.,. i. 
931.—C. Gay, Fl. Chil., i. 489.—TONTHATCH., 
As. Min. Bot., vii. 154.—Bot. Mag., t. 2018, 
2254 (Haplophyllum), 2311.—Watp., Rep., i. 
517, 518; ii. 824; v. 394 (Haplophyllum) ; 
Ann., i. 156 (Haplophyllum) ; ii. 251 ; iii. 840 
(Haplephyllum) ; vii. 507. 
