MALPiaHIAOEM. 



435 



Banisteria argentea. 



surmounted by tliree styline branches, with truncate or capitate stig- 

 matiferous apex. But what principally characterises this genus, as 

 well as all those included in this series, is the organisation of the 

 fruit (fig. 439), which is formed of one, two, or three samaree dorsally 

 surmounted by a rertical wing, mem- 

 branous or nearly woody and traversed 

 by ramified veins. The rest of its sur- 

 face is smooth or covered with a variable 

 number of points, prickles, or unequal 

 ridges. The seed contains under its 

 coats a fleshy embryo, straight or more 

 or less recurved. Banisteria are shrubs, 

 often sarmentose, climbing, whose leaves 

 are opposite, more rarely verticillate by 

 threes, often petiolate, glanduliferous at 

 the base, entire, accompanied by inde- 

 pendent or connate caducous stipules. 

 The flowers ^ are collected in umbelli- 

 form cymes, often united in more or less 

 ramified clusters, with pedicels placed in the axil of a bract more 

 or less leaf -like and accompanied by two lateral bracteoles. About 

 sixty species ® of this genus are known, all natives of the tropical 

 regions of the new world. 



Besides Banisteria are placed numerous genera whose fruits are 

 analogous. Peixotoa (fig. 440), Brazilian shrubs, often climbing, 

 having a valvate calyx with eight glands, and ten stamens, of which 

 five, superposed to the petals, are alone provided with a fertile anther, 

 whilst the other five have the filament surmounted by a glandular 

 swelling. The leaves are opposite, accompanied by large confluent 

 interpetiolate stipules, and the flowers are united, to the number of 

 four, in small umbels enveloped at flrst by the large valvate bracts. 

 Ryssopterys, climbing shrubs from the tropical regions of Australia, 

 have the fruit and flower of Banisteria^ but without glands to the 

 calyx ; leaves opposite or nearly so, with petiole bearing two glands, 



Fig. 439. Fruit. 



' White or oftener rosy or yellow. 9. — Tuecz. Bull. Mosc. (1858), i. 392. 



' H. B. K. Nov. Gen. et Spec. v. 158, t. 450.— Pl. in Ann. So. Nat. s&, 4, xviii. 321.- 



A. Joss. A. S. S. M. Bras. Mer. iii. 36, t. 168, Rep. v. 222 ; Ann. ii. 200 ; vii. 472. 

 169. — Gtbiseb. M<irt. M. Bras. Malpigh. 42, t. 8, 



-Tb. et 

 -Walp. 



