12 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



Each, cell is divided by a false partition, sometimes incomplete, into 

 two cellules containing each one seed nearly basilar, ascending, with 

 micropyle at first directed downwards and outwards, ultimately 

 becoming more or less lateral in consequence of a slight twist. The 

 fruit is a berry enclosing from one to four seeds. Under the integu- 

 ments is found a thick fleshy embryo, ellipsoid, or nearly orbicular, 

 with conical inferior radicle, partly concealed by the auriculate base 

 of the plano-convex cotyledons. In another species of the genus, 

 A. tetracantha^ type of a section Monetia,^ the flowery and fruit are 

 the same, except that the lobes of the style are much less developed, 

 and that each ovary cell contains but one instead of two ovules. Thus 

 constituted, the genus Asima comprises two or three shrubs,^ sometimes 

 sarraentous, natives of the warm regions of Eastern Africa, Southern 

 Asia, and the Indian Archipelago. The glabrous and tetragonal 

 branches bear opposite, articulate, coriaceous leaves, furnished with 

 two small lateral stipules ; in the axils are from two to six spines 

 representing the principal hardened nervures of the first leaves of the 

 axillary branch.* The flowers ^ are in the axils of the leaves (or of 

 the bracts which take their place), in simple or ramifled clusters with 

 decussate divisions, the florets springing inferiorly from a receptacular 

 cavity at the bottom of which is articulated the attenuated summit 

 of the pedicel. 



Beside the Asimas are ranged~ the Doleras, which grow in the 

 same regions and possess the same organs of vegetation and fructifi- 

 cation, but the flower, polygamous and ordinarily tetramerous, pos- 

 sesses within each petal a flattened glandular scale, while their stamens 

 are monadelphous to near the middle of tlieir filaments, and their 

 superior ovary is reduced to a single uniovulate cell and one or more 

 sterile cellules. 



^Safea^ora (fig. 17-20) constitutes a type reduced from the preceding, 

 with hermaphrodite or unisexual, tetramerous, tetrandrous flowers, 

 and only one uniovulate ovarian cell, surmounted by a short stigma- 



' Lamk. loc. cit.—K."DG. loo. cit. 29, n. 1.— ? Cap.i. 474 {Monetia) .—Tvi,. Ann. Se. Nat. s6r. 



A. nova Blanco, FL Filip. ed. 2, i^.—Fagonia 4. viii. 113 (^Monetia).—Wa.v. Sep. i. 641 



Montana Hohen. herb. — Moiietia barUroides {Monetia) ; Ann. i. 16. 



Lheb. loc. cit. — H. Bn. Adansoma, ix. 285 . ■• H. Bn. Adansovia ix. 286. 



2 Sect. Azima H. Bn. loe. cit. 6 Small, white or pink, odorous. 



3 Wioai. III. t. 152.— Haev. and Sonc. Fl. 



