212 HYPERICACE.E. 



bumen none. Embryo cylindrical : cotyledons very short, 

 at the extremity opposite the hilum. 



Suffruticose, with the branches or young stems ancipi- 

 tal, very leafy, and terminated with single large flowers or 

 three together. Leaves all opposite, sessile, often partly 

 clasping, oval, oblong, or obovate, entire, usually opaque and 

 coriaceous, punctate with translucent and beneath with 

 blackish dots. Pedicels bibracteolate. Petals yellow. 



Etymology. An old name of the St. JohnVwort, composed of a priva- 

 tive, and a-Kipos, asperity, from the smoothness of these plants. 



Geographical Distribution, &c. A genus of several species, natives 

 of the Atlantic and chiefly Southern United States, and of the West Indies. 

 Two species extend northward in the warm Pine barrens near the coast, as 

 far as New Jersey and Long Island. — Besides the genuine species, which 

 have the outer pair of sepals ovate or cordate, many times larger than 

 the narrow or minute and somewhat colored inner pair, and entirely inclos- 

 ing them as well as the pod in fruit, there is a single species in Florida (A. 

 microsepalum, Torr. cj- Gr.; the genus Isophyllum, Spactt) with the small 

 and narrow sepals not more unequal than in Hypericum, from which it dif- 

 fers only in the quaternary number of parts, and to which, rather than to 

 Ascyrum, it should most probably be appended. Thus restricted, the pres- 

 ent genus is well marked in habit and character. 



PLATE 91. Ascyrum stans, Miehx. ; — a flowering branch (from New 

 Jersey, Knitskirn), of the natural size. 



1. Diagram of the flower, aestivation, &c. 



2. Flower, the petals removed or fallen. 



3. Outsidej and 4, inside view of an anther, &c, magnified. 



5. A tricarpellary pistil and the receptacle, magnified. 



6. Transverse section of the same, showing the placenta; and ovules. 



7. An ovule, more magnified. 



8. Capsule in the fructiferous calyx, the anterior sepal turned down. 



9. Capsule removed from the calyx, of the natural size. 



10. A magnified seed. 



11. Vertical section of the same and of the contained embryo. 



