312 Notes and Enquiries on certain Plants 



render the young botanical reader familiar with the structure of the fructifi- 

 cation of the plants of this order, or section of an order, as to justify my 

 stepping a little aside from my main purpose to further this end. 



The following extract from The Pemiy CyclojocBdia is deemed likely to con- 

 tribute to it : — " Artocarpeae (or the bread-fruit tribe), a natural order 

 of plants nearly related to Urticese (the nettle tribe), from which it is so 

 difficult to separate it by any precise character, that there are many who con- 

 sider them nothing more than a section of Urticese. This opinion has been 

 adopted by Dr. Lindley in his Nixus Plantarum, 



" Whether a distinct order, or a section only of Urticeaj, the group of Ar- 

 tocai-peae is known by its having flowers with a very imperfectly [a term used 

 to signify the degree of manifestness or developement as compared with 

 calyxes more manifest and developed borne by many plants in other orders] 

 formed calyx, no corolla, leaves with conspicuous stipules, a rough foliage 

 [Madura aurantiaca has smooth leaves without stipules, Nutlall. Yet, in the 

 account of M. aurantiaca, in Lambert's Appendix to the Monograph on the 

 Genus Pimis, the stipules are stated to be two, and ciliate], and an acrid 

 milky juice, which often contains caoutchouc in abundance. The flowers are 

 collected into round heads, and the ovules are suspended singly from the 

 upper part of the solitary cavity of the ovarium. They are thus distinguished 

 from true Urticeae by the position of their ovules [in C/rticese the ovule is 

 erect], the manner in which their flowers are arranged, and by their yielding 

 a milky juice: the juice of Urticeae is watery." (The Penny CyclopcBdkiy 

 No. 119. J. worth any young gardener's purchasing, if for the sake of the 

 treatise on Artocarpese alone.) 



The artocarpuses have not their sexes dioecious, but monoecious: and in 

 figs. 41, 42, 43, and 44., a indicates the inflorescence of the male sex; b, 

 the inflorescence of the female sex; or, it would almost seem, va. figs. 41, 

 42, and 43., the commencement of its fruiting, c, in fig. 72. and fig. 44., 

 indicates the male flower with its one stamen and the two sepals of its calyx ; 

 d, vafig. 44., points out the female, consisting of a calyx enclosing the pistil 

 within except the simple club-shaped curved stigma which proceeds from the 

 style within through an orifice in the summit of the calyx ; e, in fig. 44., 

 distinguishes the ovarium or germen and part of the style; fi in j%. 42., 

 marks the ripe fruit surrounded by the enlarged soft fleshy calyx, cut open to 

 show the fruit within ; the ovarium already beginning to burst to show the 

 seed within ; g, one of the abortive female flowers partly cut away at its base 

 to show the ovarium and style within. Fig. 42. has been, and fig. 44. 

 seems also to have been, copied from t. 2833, 2834. of Curtis's Bot. Mag., 

 published July, 1828 ; whence some interesting particulars on the plant have 

 been quoted into this Magazine, IV. 369, 370., and a brief notice into the 

 Mag. Nat. Hist., i. 274. The late Rev. L. Guilding, an enthusiastic &nd dis- 

 tinguished naturalist, in a series of notes on subjects contained in the first 

 and second volumes of the latter work, has these, not hitherto published, on 

 the Artocarpus integrifolia : — " The reduced figures of the jack tree given by 

 Dr. Hooker [in Curtis's Bot. Mag."] were taken from my drawings made from 

 the living plants, and occupying three folio sheets. They give but a poor 

 idea of this most ponderous of the gifts of Pomona, The fruit, when ripe, is 

 swollen to an elongate, prickly, deformed mass, generally bursting, from its 

 weight, which is from 50 lb. to 801b.: it hangs on the main branches and 

 trunk, which are alone able to support so bulky a production. A tree thus 

 loaded (unnaturally, as it seems) forms a striking feature in the scenery of 

 India. [L. Guilding. St. Vincent, May 1. 1830.] 



Macliira aurantiaca. (figs. 45, 46, and 47.) 



Botanists have not concurred in deeming the sexes of the Maclur« auran- 

 tiaca dioecious, as the following citation will shov/ : — 



Maclurfl aurantiaca, Dice'cia Tetrandria, Nidtall, the first describer and 

 namer of this plant, both in its genus and species, in his Genera, c^r., of North 

 American Plants, ii, 233., 1818. The essence of his account is translated into 



