506 Flora of the Malayan Peninsida. 



times free, more usually connate in a tube around the ovary, forming 

 with the anthers and their terminal appendages a staminal column, 

 vdih. the apex often united to the dilated part of the style, usually with 

 more or less fleshy processes on the back forming a staminal corona ; 

 anthers free or united to the dilated part of the style, 2-celled ; the cells 

 dehiscing by apical longitudinal or transverse slits ; the margins of the 

 anthers or their basal prolongations below the cells more or less horny 

 and wing-like (the antlier-ioings), usually projecting outwards; the 

 adjacent wings of each pair of anthers nearly meeting and forming 

 between them very narrow fissures leading to the stigmatic cavities ; 

 connectives of the anthers often produced into membranous rarely 

 fleshy or inflated terminal appendages which are sometimes connate ; 

 pollen-contents of each anther-cell granular or united into one or two 

 waxy masses (jJoUen-masses) formed of an indefinite number of pollen- 

 grains and attached in pairs or in fours, sometimes directly but more 

 usually by means of arm-like cauclicles to each of the 5 small, usually 

 horny, tin'gid or bilobed pollen-carriers, which rest one on each of the 

 5 angles of the dilated part of the style, the whole forming the pollinia, 

 the masses attached to each pollen-carrier always being derived from the 

 cells of two different but adjacent anthers ; when granular, each granule 

 is formed of about 4 pollen-grains united together, and, on the dehiscence 

 of the anthers, the whole is loosely contained in the horny spoon-, 

 trumpet-, or trowel-like or bifid appendicle tapering downwards into a 

 short or long caiidicle attached to a soft (adhesive?) pollen-carrier gland. 

 Ovary superior, of 2 one-celled, many-ovuled, carpels, free below ; the 

 styles united above and dilated into a pentagonal disk {style-apex) which 

 is flat or depressed in the centre, with or without a conical or otherwise 

 shaped tip, and bears on its angles the pollen-carriers and immediately 

 beneath them, behind the fissures between the anther- wings, the 5 stig- 

 matic cavities ; ovules usually numerous, rarely few or solitary, anatro- 

 pous, pendulous, imbricate in several series on the projecting placenta. 

 Fruit of 2 (or 1 by suppression) divaricate or parallel follicular mericarps, 

 dehiscing by the ventral suture and usually liberating the placenta ; 

 pericarp usually smooth, sometimes echinate or winged. Seeds usually 

 flat, sometimes ovoid or cylindric, usually with a broad or narrow 

 margin, generally crowned with a coma of long silky hairs, sometimes 

 fringed, sometimes without any tuft ; testa thin or thick ; albumen 

 usually thin, sometimes rather thick, sometimes none ; embryo large, 

 nearly or quite filling the seed ; cotyledons flat ; radicle usually 

 cylindric, superior. — Disteib. A large Family of more than 1800 

 species, widely distributed over tropical and subtropical, with a few 

 in temperate, regions. 



