UMBELLIFERM 



147 



missure, has primary ridges but little prominent and thick or thin 

 vittse, vertical or anastomose, sometimes none. Eryngium is herba- 

 ceous, more rarely arborescent, quite or nearly glabrous, with very 

 variable leaves, either lobed, or dissected, or entire, and ciliate, 

 dentate and resembling in form those of certain Monocotyledons 

 (Graminece, Bromeliacece, Pandanem), not unfrequently rigid and 



Eryngium maritimum. 



Fig. 171. Flower (f). 



Fig. 170. Inflorescence. 



Fig. 172. Long. sect, 

 of flower. 



pointed at the margin. They inhabit all warm and temperate 

 regions of the globe ; only Alepidea represents the genus in South 

 Africa. 



Astrantia (fig. 173-176) has nearly the flowers oi Eryngium; but 

 they are polygamous, and in the same inflorescence, resembling an 

 umbel, the outer flowers however being less developed than the 

 central; the female flowers are sessile or shortly pedicellate; the 

 males having longer pedicels. The entire inflorescence is surrounded 

 by numerous bracts, forming a collarette, wide, membranous, often 

 coloured. As in Eryngium there is no carpophore, and the fruit, 

 whose transverse section is circular or a little compressed perpen- 

 dicular to the partition, has equal primary ridges, the surface of 

 which is raised or bubbled. The seeds are facially entire and have 

 an abundant albumen in the summit of which is lodged a small 

 embryo. In Epipactis,, type of a genus Hacquetia (fig. 176) these 

 ridges are much less developed and the fruit is more compressed and 

 constricted at the commissure. In A. eryngioides, of which the 



L 2 



