98 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



at antHesis. The scarcely perigynous androceum is formed of from 

 four to twelve stamens, united among themselves by the base of their 

 filaments iato a short tube, cleft on one side, and becoming shorter 

 the nearer they are to this cleft, toward the edges of which we only 



Trir/onia villosa. 



Fig. 138. Flower (f). 



Fig. 139. Long. sect, of flower. 



Fig. 140. Seed {\). 



Fig. 141. Long. sect, 

 of seed. 



Fig. 142. Bilateral 

 long. sect, of seed. 



see a variable number of staminodes. All the stamens are disposed 

 according to a synimetrical plan, which is the same as that of the 

 corolla, the staminodes and smallest stamens being found on the side 

 of the spurred petal. The anthers are bilocular, introrse, dehiscing 

 by two longitudinal clefts. The gynseceum is free, formed of an 

 ovary with three cells, surmounted by a style, whose entire summit 

 is dilated into a small head or into a stigmatiferous cupule cut 

 straight or obliquely. In the inner angle of each cell is seen a 

 placenta, bearing an indefinite number of descendent anatropous 

 ovules. The fruit is a tricoceate septicidal capsule, whose numerous 

 seeds are covered with long woolly hairs, and whose oblique embryo, 

 with wide suborbicular, foliaceous cotyledons, is surrounded by a 

 thick fleshy albumen. Trigonia of which at least twenty species are 

 distinguished,^ consists of sarmentose or climbing shrubs with 



1 H. B. K. Nov. Gen. et Spec. v. 141.— Cam- 

 BBSS. in A. S. H. Fl. Bras. Mei: ii. 80, t. 105. 



— Walp. Eep. i. 248 ; ii. 769 ; Ann. i. 76 ; ii. 

 86; iv. 240. 



