346 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



gltudinal placenta supporting two collateral or nearly superposed 

 ovules, more or less ascendent, anatropous, with the raphe turned 

 inwards, and the micropyle downwards and outwards. The fruit is 

 formed of one, two, or three gibbous drupes with a stone more or less 

 rugose and reticulate outwardly, and covered by a sarcocarp of vari- 

 able thickness. In each stone is found two or, more often, one as- 

 cendent, reniform seed, with albumen of little thickness or reduced 

 to a simple membrane, enveloping a curved embryo, having lateral 

 cotyledons, rugose or waved, with inferior and incurved radicle. 

 The Sabias are sarmentous and climbing shrubs, natives of warm and 

 temperate Eastern Asia. The branches bear shoots with imbricate 

 persistent scales, first appendages of the foliate branches. The leaves 

 are alternate, entire, penninerved. The flowers,^ usually opening 

 early, are arranged in axillary clusters, pedunculate, simple, or 

 ramified, sometimes even corymbiform or simulating cymes. Ten 

 species have been described.^ 



Meliosma * (fig. 344-350) is allied to SaMa, although immediately 

 distinguished by the union of the carpels in an ovary with two or 



Meliosma Arnottiana. 



rig. 344. Bud (f). 



Fig. 346. Flower. Fig. 346. Longitudinal section of flower. 



three biovulate cells, and by the interior appendages with which 

 the petals are provided. These are three in number, valvate or, 

 much oftener, imbricate. There has frequently been described as 

 fourth and fifth petals * a simple or double tongue borne on the back 



1 Small or medium, whitish. 



2 "Wall. Roxb. M. Ind. ii. 308.— Hook. f. & 

 Thoms. Fl. Ind. i. 206.— MiQ. Fl. Ind.-Bat. i. 

 209 ; Suppl. i. 520 ; t. 44.— Benth. Fl. Songk. 

 70._Walp. Ann. iv. 138 ; vii. 639. 



3 Bl. Fl. Jav. Free/. 7.— Endl. Gen. n. 5639. 

 — Payek. Mull. Soc. Sot. de Fr. v. 21.— B. H. 

 Qen. 414, u. 2. — Mil/ini/toina 'Ro^i.B, Fl. InH. 102 



(not 'L.).— Oligostemon Turcz. Bull. Mose. 

 (1858), i. iil.—Zonmeana Liebm. Vidd. Medd. 

 Fjob. (1850), &l.—Kwgsboroughia Liebm. he. 

 at. 69.— Pl. Ann. So. Nat. s&. 4, iii. 295.— 

 Zlavea Pl. Fl. des serres, v. u. 300 (incl. : Opkio- 

 cart/on Sohomb. (?), Plioxanthus Benth.). 



< Looking at it in this way there would be 

 as many petals as sepals, two of these, more 



