68 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



ledons. The Cornels inhabit the temperate regions of Europe, Asia, 

 N. America, and Peru. More than twenty species ' are distinguished. 

 The greater part are woody and have opposite, entire, or serrulate, 

 penninerved leaves. There is, however, in the United States a 

 Comus alternifolia} The inflorescences are cymes. Sometimes the 

 flowers are white and pedicellate ; the cyme is more or less corymbi- 

 form : it is so in C. sanguinea, alba, paniculata, &c., which have been 

 united in a section Thelycrania/ Sometimes the flowers are yellow 

 and the pedicels short ; the collected inflorescence resembles an 

 limbel, as in C. mas* (fig. 47-51). In other cases the cyme is of 

 sessile flowers, composed of glomerules and surrounded by from four 

 to eight coloured bracts forming a petaloid involucre, as in G. suecica, 

 canadensis, herbaceous species,' and in G. florida (fig. 46), an arbores- 

 cent species.* But the fruits, although very close to each other (in a 

 false capitule), are nearly independant; whilst in G. fragifera, of 

 which the genus Benthamia ' has been made, the flowers of the 

 glomerule, surrounded by an involucre, are united by their receptacular 

 portion, and still more the fruits, which form a compound drupe, in 

 the form of a large strawberry with areolate surface. 



Corokia * has nearly the flower of Gornus, ordinarily pentamerous,' 

 with the same inferior and di- or tricarpelar ovary. A small scale, 

 often scarcely visible and laciniate above, lines the base of the petals. 

 The ovary is surmounted by a disk and a style with two or three 

 short and thick stigmatiferous branches. The two or three cells are 

 incomplete at the summit, where a placentary enlargement supports, 

 in each cell, a descending ovule, with micropyle interior and superior. 

 The fruit is a drupe of which the putamen is 1, 2-celled.^'' Two- 



1 MiCHX. Fl. Bor.-Amer. i. 91.— RoxB. Fl. ■* Sect. Tanycrania Enbl. loc. cit. b. — Macro- 



Xnd. i. 432. — C. A. Mey. Ann. Sc. Nat, ser. 3, carpium Spaoh, loc. dt. 101. 



iv. 58. — CEdek, Fl. Dan. t. 6. — Sow. Fngl. Bot. * Sect. Aretocrania Endl. loc. cit. a. — Cormion 



t. 310.— Wall. PI. As. Bar. t. 214.— Toer. et Spach, loe. cit. 9. 



Gb. Fl. N.-Amer. i. 649. — Wight, III. 1. 122. — * Gen. Benthamidia Spach, loc. cit. 106. 



Benth. Fl. Songk. 137. — Gken. et Godb. Fl. de 7 Lindl. Bot. Mag. t. 1579 ; Veg. Kingd. 



Fr. ii. 2.— Bot. Mag. t. 526, 880, 2676, 4641.— (1846) 782, fig. 618.— Spach, loc. cit. 108.— 



Walp. Sep. ii. 436; v. 932; Ann. i. 369; ii. Endl. (?««. n. 4575.— Sieb. etZvcc.Fl. Jap. i. 



725 ; T. 90. 37, t. 16. 



' L. p. Suppl. 126. — Lher. loe. cit. t. 6. — ^ ^. Cunn. Am. Nat. Bl^t. iii. 249. — Endl. 



GuiMp. Abb. Bolz. t. 43. — C. alterna, Maksh. — Gen. n. 6761. — B. H. Gen. 949, u. 4. — H. Bn. 



DC. Prodr. n. 1. Payer Fam. Nat. 340. 



^ Endl. oc. cit. 0. — MicrocarjAmn Spach, loc. ' Sometimes hexameroua. 



cit. 92, sect. 1. '" With complete or incomplete ceLU. 



