356 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



glandular edges, five alternipetalous stamens, interior to a circular disk, 

 and a trilocular ovary, succeeded by a capsular tricoccous fruit with 

 exarillate seeds. The Harpullias, trees from Oceania, with pinnate " 

 leaves, have also regular flowers, with large imbricate petals, some- 

 times pentamerous, more often tetramerous, with 5-8 stamens but 

 without a very visible disk. The capsule is woody and tricoccous, 

 more often dicoccous, coriaceous and vesiculate, coloured red, and 

 the seeds are provided with an aril. Hypelate, inhabiting the 

 Antilles, has the same tetramerous or pentamerous floral structure as 

 Earpullia, with short petals, two descendent ovules in each of the 

 two or three cells of the ovary, and an indehiscent fruit, fleshy or 

 coriaceous, having exarillate seeds and a thick embryo with plano- 

 convex cotyledons. Hippolromus, consisting of shrubs from southern 

 Africa and the Mascarene Islands, have the flowers of Hypelate, 

 with very small petals or without corolla, a coriaceous indehiscent 

 fruit, and seeds destitute of aril and albumen, whose embryo has 

 bent or conduplicate cotyledons. Pseudopteris, a genus from Mada- 

 gascar, incompletely known, has male flowers analogous to those of 

 JJippobromus, hut with flvepetaloid sepals and five small hood- shaped 

 petals each enveloping one of the glands of the disk, which are 

 independent of each other instead of being united in a ring, and 

 alternate with an equal number of interior long-exserted stamens. . 

 The long pinnate leaves of Pseudopteris are collected in large 

 numbers at the summit of the branches, and their male fiowers are 

 detached from the wood and stems in long clusters of cymes. 

 Averrhoidium^ a Brazillian tree, has the compound pinnate leaves of 

 Averrhoa and apetalous flowers of Hypelate, Hippohromus, and 

 Schleichera, bearing towards the middle of the internal angle of each 

 of the three ovary cells, two ovules one of which is ascendent and 

 the other descendent. In Filwium, a tree from Ceylon (generally 

 considered as a Terebinthacea), the polygamous flowers are also 

 those of Hypelate or Melicocca, but the disk is interior to the stamens, 

 and the ovule, although solitary, is directed like that of Hippohromus ^ 

 descendent, with the micropyle upwards and outwards. Ganophyllum^ 

 a tree from tropical Oceania, placed until now beside Pilicium, has, 

 in its male flowers, five to eight stamens alternate with the glands 

 of the disk, but more interior, as is the case with the Sapindacece in 

 general. Its polygamo-dicecious flowers are moreover apetalous, but 



