Mierolieia [Zav^iisiera) australU. 



MELASTOMACE^. 9 



prolonged or dilated, and bearing the pore of dehiscence. The op- 

 positipetalous stamens are smaller than the five others. The ovary 

 is 3-5-celled. The flowers 

 are solitary, axilar or ter- 

 minal. To this genus we 

 refer as sections : Rhyn- 

 canthera, the flowers of 

 which are united in clusters 

 of cymes, and have ten 

 stamens but often partly 

 sterile ; those remaining 

 fertile numbering from one 

 to six; Trembkya, having 

 solitary flowers, ten fertile 

 stamens and 3-5 cells in 

 the ovary. Lavoisier a, hav- 

 ing most frequently solitary, 

 terminal flowers of large 



size, with 10 to 15 stamens, and 4 to 8 ovarian cells, but with all 

 the fundamental organization of Mierolieia} 



Ghcetostoma, native of southern Brazil, is hardly separable from 

 Mierolieia by its floral characters. The stamens have only narrow 

 anthers subulate at the summit. The flowers are ordinarily solitary 

 and terminate branches most frequently ^ clothed with small rigid 

 pointed ericoid leaves. The free ovary is divided into three or four 

 multiovulate cells. 



Cambessedesia, a Bra,zilian shrub, is also very near Mierolieia. 

 It has the narrow pointed anthers of Ghcetostoma, a 3-celled ovary. 



Fig. 12. Long. sect, of flower. 



' Ceniradenia (fig. 13) are near Mierolieia, 

 and are distinguished first by their anthers not 

 prolonged to a beak and by the sepals much 

 shorter than the receptacle. They are tetra- 

 merous flowers, and the connective is prolonged 

 below the anther in a curved flattened layer on 

 the back of which is inserted the top of the fila- 

 ment. The ovary is free in its upper half and its 

 summit is bare or surmounted by four teeth. 

 Natives of the southern and western portions 

 of North America, Cmtrddefiia comprises herbp.- 

 ceous or subshrubby plants with tetragonal or 



tetrapterous branches, and. are remarkable for 

 the inequality of the two leaves of the same 

 pair, one remaining very small or scarcely 

 visible, while the other, very unsymmetrical, is 

 largely developed. 



" Steiiodon auberosus, a Brazilian plant, difiers 

 entirely by its lar'je foliage and abundant 

 white down, firom the other Chcetostomas ; but it 

 is to the latter what T. Lychnitis is to the 

 other Trembleyas, which has not, however, been 

 separated generically from them. 



