370 



NATURAL HISTORY OP PLANTS. 



in a sort of spoon-shaped bowl on which is inserte'd one of the pieces 

 of the calyx, the smallest of all,^ whilst the four other sepals, ante- 

 terior and lateral, are more developed. All are quincuncially im- 

 bricate in the bud. With .them alternate four or five petals (the 

 anterior may be wanting,^) like narrow fleshy tongues, more or less 



Melianthus major. 



Fig. 409. Flower. Fig. 410. Flower, a Fig. 411. 

 sepal folded back. Diagram. 



Fig. 412. Longitudinal Fig. 413. Young 

 section of flower. fruit. 



tomentose. The receptacle is adorned inwardly by a glandtdar disk 

 rising in a projecting double ridge on the side of sepal 2, and secret- 

 ing an abundant sweet nectar. The stamens are four, superposed 

 to the sepals 1, 3, 4', and 5 ; they are unequal, the two anterior 

 being finally the shortest, and the two posterior may be completely 

 united below by a transverse fillet ; each is formed of a free decli- 

 nate filament and a bilocular introrse anther dehiscent by two lon- 

 gitudinal clefts. The free, slightly excentric, gynseceum is formed 

 by an ovary with four cells separated outwardly by vertical grooves. 

 Two of them are lateral, the other two anterior and posterior. Each 

 of them exhibits in its internal angle a placenta supporting two ver- 

 tical series of ascendent, anatropal ovules, having the micropyle 

 directed downwards and outwards.^ There are one or two on each 

 series. The fruit, accompanying for a longer or shorter time the 

 perianth and staminal filaments (fig. 413), is a papyraceous capsule, 

 with four projecting lobes and four cells opening longitudinally and 

 inwardly above. They generally contain an exarillate seed, having 



57 ; Suppl. iii. 646. — GjEutn. Fruct. iii. 158, t. 

 211.— DC. Prodr. i. 708.— A. Juss. Mim. Mm. 

 xii. 459, t. 28, fig. 48.— Lindl. Fe^-. Kingd. 479. 

 — JImbl. Gen. n. 6043. — Payeh, Organog. 86, t. 

 18.— B. H. Om. 411, n. 69. — Schnizl. leonogr. 

 t. 253 «.— Lem. at Done. Tr. Gin. 228.— i 



risma Pl. Trans. Ltnn. Soc. xx. 416, t. 20, fig. 

 15-20. 



^ It is sepal 2. 



2 It exists at the commencement, but may be 

 arrested at a very early period of its evolution. 



^ With double coat. 



