4 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



covered with anatropous or campylotropous ovules.' The fruit is 

 fleshy or coriaceous/ finally breaking more or less irregularly and 

 allowing the escape of a large number of small seeds (fig. 6, 7) ; 

 they are curved or spiral and enclose an embryo likewise curved, 

 fleshy, without albumen, with a conical radicle, nearly equal in length 

 to the cotyledons.' There are some species of Melastoma whose 

 flowers have six or seven parts. All are woody ; they are generally 

 shrubs, of which some forty species have been described.* Probably 

 they are much less numerous. All inhabit the Qld World, especially 

 the tropical regions of Asia, Oceania, and the islands of the Indian 

 Ocean. Their stems are almost always erect and covered with 

 asperities-of variable structure. The leaves are opposite, petiolate, 

 entire, and 5-7-nerved at the base with well developed secondary 

 nervures extending from one extremity of the limb to the other, like 

 the principal nerve, in the form of outwardly convex arcs ; a character 

 nearly constant in this family. The flowers are terminal, solitary or 

 in cymes more or less branched, and accompanied by bracts some- 

 times well developed. 



In two Malayan Melastomas, of which the genus Otanthcra^ has 

 been made, the stamens difi'er a little in the form of the connective, 

 which prolonged below the anther is accompanied at its base by two 

 tubercles or spurs ; but the fruit is that of other Melastomas from 

 which we can separate them only as a section. 



Osbeckia is very neaij Melastoma ; it is distinguished chiefly by the 

 consistence of its fruit, which is a valvicide capsule with four or five 

 cells. The stamens, moreover, from eight to ten in number, have 

 within the base of the connective two tubercles similar to those of 

 Melastoma, but this connective is very little prolonged below the cells 

 of the anther. The plants are natives of Asia, Oceania, and tropical 

 Africa. Their habits and organs of vegetation are, like those of 

 Melastoma, very variable. Thus Dissotis consists of OsbecMas often 



. With double envelope ji^t. i. p. i. 502.-Bl. Mus. Luffd-Sat. i. 50.- 



2 Its surface, or rather that of the receptacle Bekth. Fl. Austral, iii. 292.— Mot Sea t 672 



which envelops it, is covered with the same —Bot. Mag. t. 529, 2241.— Walp ijra ii 132 ■ 



hairs, scales, or spines seen in the flower and v. 703 ; Ann. ii. 564 ; iv 818 —Hook Fl I d 



which persist, but growing and becoming more ii. 523.— Baker, Fl. Mawit 121 ' " ' 



distant from each other as the fruit enlarges. 3 Bl. Floi-a (1831), 488- Mu's Luad Bat ' 



^ Equal or somewhat unequal. 56, t. 20.-Naud. loo. cit. xiii. 352 -B H Gan 



" Laisill. Sert. Austro-cahd. t. 64.— •Wight, 748, n. 43.— Hook Fl Ind ii 522 -/' i, 



Illustr. t. 95.— KoKTB. Verh. Nut. Gesch. t. 49. dium Bi,. Mm. Lund -Bat i 56 ' ''*"''-^''" 

 — Thw. F urn. Fl. Zeijl. 106.— MiQ. Fl. Ind.- ' ' ' 



