296 



NATUBAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



its leaves, the flowers are polygamous (fig. 275, 276) and have a 

 receptacle varying much in shape according as they include 

 the two sexes or are only males. That is, when they are her- 

 maphrodite or female, the ovary is lodged in a tubular, obconical 

 or ovoid pouch, forming its receptacular cavity, which disappears 



^nisophylleu disticha. 



TTig. 275. Florii'erous "branch. 



Kg. 276. Long. sect, of male flower (^). 



when there is no gynsecium to envelop. The epigynous calyx is 

 formed of four tolerably thick triangular, valvate sepals, and the 

 corolla, of the same number of alternate petals. The latter are 

 often thick and fleshy, sometimes small and entire, or very slightly 

 sloped at the summit, bilobed or divided into a variable number of 

 unequal lobes. The androecium is diplostemonous, and its eight 

 pieces, superposed, four to the sepals, and four to the petals, are 

 alternate with an equal number of lobes of the epigynous disk. 

 They are formed each of a free subulate filament, thickened and 

 often compressed towards the base, and of an introrse, bilocular 

 anther, dehiscing by two longitudinal clefts, which may be reduced 

 to a small sterile mass, of glandular appearance, in the oppositipetalous 



Anisophyllum Don, ex Sook. Niger Fl. 342, 575 Gard!*. et Champ. Hook. Xew Journ. i. 314. — 

 (not Haw.). — Benth. Journ. Linn. Soc. iii. 72. Hook. F/. bid. ii. 441. 

 ■ — H. Bn. Adaiiaonia, iii. 22, 36. — Tetracryptu 



