384 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
pendent among themselves, and each tapers above into a slender style, 
uniting with the others in forming a single column tapering and stig- 
matiferous at the apex. In the internal angle of each ovary is a 
parietal placenta generally supporting three anatropous ovules. Two 
of them are superior, more or less collateral, and more or less oblique, 
oftener ascending than descending.’ If they were horizontal, as 
they are occasionally, the micropyle would be above the raphe, which 
would become inferior and horizontal. The inferior ovule is always 
descending ; its raphe is dorsal; its micropyle directed inwards and 
upwards. The fruit is dry, stipitate formed of five rostrate shells, 
di- or tri-spermous, opening elastically into two valves, the horny 
endocarp separating from the exterior layers. The subglobular 
seeds contain under their coats’ a fleshy albumen surrounding an 
embryo with short radicle and thick cotyledons. This genus only 
contains one species, herbaceous, perennial, or suffrutescent at the 
base, all the parts loaded with prominent glands secreting a very 
odoriferous essence. The leaves are alternate imparipinnate, with 
serrulate punctuate folioles. The flowers are disposed in terminal 
racemes of uniparous cymes. The single species of this genus* 
grows in southern Europe, and in all temperate Asia. 
We remark, then, in this first small series of Rufacee that there 
are regular and irregular types, some with carpels independent of each 
other in the ovary, while the styles are united among themselves, 
and others in which the union extends to the ovaries themselves, 
but to a very variable extent, without other features of organization 
sufficiently clear to serve in distinguishing other genera. These 
differences are also found in other series of the family; they serve to 
distinguish one from the other, or to establish in certain of them 
subseries comparable to those which may be named here: Lwurutee 
(Ruta, Baœnninghausenia, Thamnosma, Tetradiclis), and Dictamnee 
(Dictamnus). 

1 With two coats. 
2 The exterior is smooth and black; the 
internal angle is occupied to about half its 
extent by a cicatrice, the separated edges 
exposing to view the middle coat, brown and 
little enduring, The interior is membranous 
and whitish. 
3 D, Fraxinella Prrs., Enchirid., i. 464.— 
Link., Enum., i. 898.—Scuxuur., Handb., t. 
114.—Retcus., Ic. Fl. Germ., v. 159.—Boiss., 
FT, Or, i. 920.—D. albus L., Spec., 548.— 
DC., Fl. Fr. iv. 734.—Gren,. & Gopr., £1. de 
Tr, i, 329,—Watr., Rep., i. 517; Ann. vii. 
509. 
