150 JOURNAL, BOMBA Y NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. IX. 



Ovules. — Numerous, suspended or descending, anatropous ; with 



their micropyle upwards and inwards ; arranged in two rows, on 



three parietal placentas ; raphe ventral and very prominent. 



Baillon observes that " in the one-celled ovary there are three parietal 



placentas, whereof two are posterior." He adds a note, however, that 



we do find two or four carpels with the same number of placentas and 



valves to the fruit. I am quite familiar with this tree, having seen it 



during the last thirty years, if not more, growing wherever I have lived, 



and I can confidently say that I have not yet seen a two-carpellary or 



four-carpellary ovary in this plant either in Bombay or in Thana. 



FRUIT. — A capsule, elongate, 9 to 18 inches long, sometimes a little 

 over two feet in length, | to 1 inch thick, rostrate, pendulous, 

 torulose, 3 to 6-angled, with nine longitudinal ribs, 3-carpelled, 1-celled; 

 loculicidally 3-valved, valves bearing the seed along the middle of 

 their inner surface. The capsule is succulent and soft within when 

 unripe ; corky and pitted when mature and about to dehisce ; the 

 outer coat of the capsule, which is chiefly formed of the ribs referred 

 to above, consists of tough fibrous plates longitudinally, oftener toru- 

 losely, arranged and bound together by a green substantial parenchy- 

 matous substance. 



SEEDS. — Trigonous, numerous, in pits of the valves, " half-buried 

 in their fungous substance produced from the inner wall of the 

 pericarp" (Baillon). Hamilton* says that each capsule when full- 

 grown contains about fifteen seeds. In size the seed is considerably 

 larger than a pea. Chalaza, apical, corky (Le Maout and Decaisne). 

 Testa. — Corky, winged at the angles. Baillon thus describes this 

 winged nature of the testa from which the plant derives its 

 characteristic name of pterygosperma : — " In M. pterygosperma 

 the superficial seed coat is hypertrophied into a vertical wing, which 

 extends into the sinus between the two valves. These wings are 

 imbricated with those of their neighbouring seeds, which may at 

 maturing be arranged in a single vertical row along the axis of the 

 capsule." " The number of wings," adds Baillon, " will vary of 

 course with that of the valves, and also because the wing may 

 remain exceptionally rudimentary on one or two angles of the 

 seed, or not be formed at all, as is normally the case in M. aptera, 

 an African, Arabian, and Syrian species." 



* Pharmaceutical Journal, Vol. V, pp. 58 and 59, 1845-46. 



