302 



'Notes and Enquiries on certain Plants 



the subject which the above questions include ; and that the broken botany in 

 which I have, in this my first essay, indulged, may not be without some use to 

 junior readers who may be engaged in the studying of plants. 



I had intended to adduce here a notification of the advantages derivable 

 from what may be termed an examination of the statistics of the dioecious- 

 sexed plants extant in Britain, and of the instruction acquirable from an ex- 

 amination of the sexual condition of the plants themselves ; but as I have not 

 yet noticed more than a share of the species which I propose to notice (per- 

 laaps, in future, they will be noticed in a shorter manner), and as one's latest 

 notions may, perhaps, be more correct than one's earlier, I reserve the expres- 

 sion of them till last. 



Division I. Plants "which invariably, or nearly so, have their Sexes 



dicecious. 



MyruticecB. — Flowers dicecious, with no trace of a second sex. Males: 

 filaments completely united into a cylinder [monadelphous] ; anthers 3 — 12., 

 either connate or distinct. Females: ovary superior, sessile, with a single 

 erect ovulum ; style very short ; stigma somewhat lobed. {hindley's Introd. 

 to Nat. Si/st. of Botany, p. 23.) Fruit as explained below. 



The several species of nutmeg are included in this order. Sweet's Hort. 

 Brit, and Loudon's Hort. Brit, show that three species have been introduced 

 into Britain. Is a plant, or are plants, of each of them still living here? Has 

 each flowered ? Of which sex is it ? In this Magazine (iii. 67, 68.) is an 

 account of the Myrlstica moschata, which produces the spice, nutmeg, in ge- 

 neral use, and an engraving of it, both derived from Curtis's Botanical Ma- 

 gazine, for August 1827. In the engraving here reproduced (7%. 37.), 



j represents the male flower, and i the female; and the two will elucidate, and 

 be elucidated by, the portion of the definition of the order which I have 

 quoted above. From Gard. Mag. iii. 67., I quote this description of the 

 fruit : — " The fruit (a) is a drupe, of the size and somewhat of the shape of 

 a small pear. ' The flesh (6), which abounds in an astringent juice, is of a 

 yellowish colour, almost white within, and four or five lines in thickness : 

 this opens into two nearly equal longitudinal valves (c, d), and presents to 

 view the nut (e) surrounded by its arillus or mace (/), which soon drops out, 

 and the husk {b) withers.' The colour of the nut, when fresh, is a brilliant 

 scarlet ; when dry, it becomes horny, brittle, and of a yellow brown j the shell 

 (g) is very hard, and not above half a line thick ; it envelopes the kernel, or 

 nutmeg of the shops {h), which is of an oval or elliptical form, pale brown, and 

 afterwards furrowed on its surface. Its outside is very thin ; its inner sub- 

 stance, or albumen (i), firm, whitish, with red veins, abounding in oil." I 

 once purchased at a grocer's two nutmegs yet enveloped in their shells (g), 



