284 NATOBAL HI8T0BY OF PLANTS. 



small and numerous for the male, solitary and yoluminous for the 

 female.^ The female capitule is supported by a thick peduncle. The 

 small male capitules are united in a large diyided cluster, bearing small 

 ramifications terminated by a sterile bractiform apex, with a yariable 

 number of small globular floral groups beneath it. Just outside the 

 leayes of the perianth, in the flowers of both sexes, are observed 

 bractlets, often described as sepals, but whose number is not always 

 equal to that of the pieces of the perianth, with which moreover 

 they do not alternate exactly, there are from two to five, more rarely 

 six to ten, and they are at first joined together in a kind of small 

 sac, hairy or rather hispid outwardly. We ought to consider them 

 as the leaves of an epicalyx. Eight species of this genus are known.^ 

 In the same group as Phytocrene is placed Miquelia, climbing 

 shrubs from tropical Asia and the Indian Archipelago, having 

 the female flowers collected in small capitules, but the male united 

 in umbels. The staminal filaments are longer than the anthers. The 

 fruit is drupaceous and glabrous, the mesocarp spreads in an equal 

 layer round the stone. The rectilinear embryo is surrounded by a 

 smooth or slightly rugose albumen. Sarcostigma^ having the 

 same aspect and inhabiting the same regions, has the flowers 

 arranged in long interrupted spikes. The staminal filaments are also 

 longer than the anthers, and the style is immediately swollen in a 

 subsessile stigmatiferous mass. The embryo is exalbuminous, .and 

 the cotyledons thick and fleshy. In Natsiatum, a sarmentaceous shrub 

 from the East Indies, the flowers of both sexes are arranged in racemes 

 the staminal fllaments are very short, the style has linear branches, 

 and the seeds have an embryo with foliaceous cotyledons, surrounded 

 by a fleshy albumen. Pyrenacantha has the aspect and foliage of 

 Natsiatum, and the flowers in racemes or spikes. But the perianth 

 is simple, not surrounded by an exterior epicalyx. The fruit, like 

 the gynseoeum, is superior accompanied by the non-accrescent peri- 

 anth. The stone is covered inwardly by aculeate projections pene- 

 trating the fleshy albumen of the seed, whose embryo has foliaceous 

 cotyledons. Close to Pyrenacantha^ inhabiting India and tropical 

 and southern Africa, ought to be placed Chhmydocarya which, 



1 The capitules of the fruit may acquire the cit. t. 487, 490, 496.— Mm. Mm. Ludg.-Bat. iii. 

 dimensions of a child's head. 248, t. 7. — Walp. Rep. i. 98 ; Aim. ii. 22 ; vii. 



2 H. Bn. Prodr. he. cit. 9-13.— Gkiit. loe. 669; 



