TEREBINTHAOE^. 28X 



moreover the albumen and embryo. Alsodeiopsis, a shrub from tro- 

 pical Africa, has nearly the flower of Mappia, with the petals united 

 in the interior by the edges, and sepals free to the base, like those of 

 Gonocaryum. In the Plateas, plants of the Indian Archipelago, the 

 sepals and petals are free, and the ovary is surmounted by a thick 

 stigmatiferous disk. The fruit is drupaceous, and the seed has a non- 

 lobate albumen. Villaresia, inhabiting both South America and 

 Oceania, has the petals imbricate in the lower part, often valvate 

 and inflected at the summit with a side projecting inwardly, the 

 anthers reniform-cordate, a short style with oblique stigmatiferous 

 apex, and a drupaceous fruit, ellipsoid, the placentary projection 

 jutting out in a groove of the seed. /SarcantMdion, a climbing shrub 

 from New Caledonia, has the fruit and seed of Villaresia, to which it 

 is closely allied. The free sepals are thickened in the lower part into 

 a fleshy decurrence forming a sheath round a very short pedicel. 

 The imbricate petals are joined closely to each other in a corolla 

 detached circularly by the base, the anthers have two independent 

 cells obliquely divergent, and the flowers are arranged in a long 

 common cluster in scorpioid contracted cymes. In Cassinopsis, 

 shrubs from the Cape and Madagascar, the flowers are those of the 

 Mappia in general, with imbricate petals hardly united at the lower 

 part by the medium of the staminal filaments. The sepals are very 

 nearly free or united in the lower portion. But the aspect and 

 foliage of these plants are completely those of Celastracece, the leaves 

 are opposite, and the fl.owers are united ia axillary, pedunculate, 

 biparous, compound cymes. 



Grisollea myriantha, a tree from Madagascar, with alternate leaves, 

 represents in this group a type completely exceptional in the organi- 

 sation of its dioecious flowers. The male have a gamosepalous calyx, 

 with five divisions, and five stamens with extrorse anthers, inserted 

 round a rudimentary gynseceum. The female have a calyx, five small 

 petals and five stamens, with rudimentary anthers. The biovu- 

 late ovary is a cylinder, sometimes slightly arched, surmounted 

 by a sort of glandular and circular plate from whose centre rises a 

 short apicula. The hardly fleshy, flattened fruit, is organized like 

 that of the Lasianthera and Kummeria ; the nearly apiculate embryo 

 is very small. 



VOL. V. 2 



