142 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



in tropical "Western Africa ; the others, seven or eight in number/ 

 inhabit the whole of tropical America. 



VII. PHYLLANTHUS SEEIES. 



Phyllanthus, the best known genus of this series, is not the most 

 complete type. This is found to be represented by other plants, 

 such, for instance, as Wielandia elegans^ (fig. 230-233), a shrub 

 from the Seychelles and neighbouring isles, which has monoecious 



Wielandia eUgans. 



Fig. 230. Male flower, Fig. 231. Male flower, Fig. 233. Female flower, Fig. 232. Female flower, 

 diagram. longitudinal section (f). longitudinal section. diagram. 



flowers, with a convex receptacle. It bears a calyx of five sepals, 

 slightly united at the base, arranged in quincuncial prsefloration 

 in the bud, and a corolla of five free, imbricated, alternate petals. 

 Farther in is found a cupular disk, with five but slightly prominent ^ 

 alternipetalous angles. The receptacle afterwards rises in a thick 

 central column which supports five alternipetalous stamens, whose 

 nearly sessile anthers are introrse in the bud, afterwards reflexed 

 outwardly at anthesis, and have two cells deshiscing by longitudinal 

 clefts. The column is terminated by a body with five oppositi- 

 petalous branches, representing the divisions of a rudimentary 

 gyngeceum. In the female fiowers, within the perianth and disk, 

 similar to those of the male flower, is seen a fertile gynseceum, the 

 ovary having five cells superposed to the petals and surmounted by 

 a style with five stigmatiferous, bi-lobed, reflexed branches. In the 



1 PcEPP. et EifDL. Nov. Qen. et Spec. iii. t. 246, a H. Bn. Euphorbiae. 568, t. 22, fig. 6-10 ; in 



flg. 2. — Oliv. Fl. trap. Afr. i. 344. — H. Bn. in Adansonia, ii. 32. — Savia ekgans M. Aro. in 



Adansonia, xi. 111. note. — Walp. Mep. i, 549 ; Linruea, xxxii. 78 ; Prodr. 228, 



ii. 829 ; v. 408 ; Ann. iv. 442. ' Sometimes hardly distinct. 



