VMBELLIFERJE. 165 



Thus defined the genus Vanax comprises woody plants from all 

 warm countries of the^ old world, with leaves almost always com- 

 pound-pinnate, less frequently digitate and sometimes even simple or 

 unifoliolate,' The flowers are often polygamo-dioecious. 



Cussonia has a flower constructed nearly like that of Panax with 

 dimerous gynsecium. The calyx is short, entire or undulate at the 

 margin and the five sepals are valvate. The bilocular ovary (some- 

 times reduced to a single cell) 



is entirely or only partly Pmax (yothopanax) mUrea. 



imbedded in the cavity of the 

 receptacle and surmounted by 

 two recurved stylary horns. 

 The fruit is drupaceous and 

 the seeds have a ruminate 

 albumen. In general the in- ^. „„„ ^ . „ „. „„, ^ 



. ° . Fig, 206. Tricarpellar Fig. 207. Long. sect. 



florescence is quite peculiar, flower®. of flower. 



spikehke and dense. Some- 

 times, however, the flowers are in umbellules borne by the divisions 

 of a compound cluster. They are trees and bushes from the Cape, 

 tropical western Africa, Madagascar, Abyssinia and Comoro isles, 

 unarmed or prickly, whose leaves, often collected at the upper part 

 of the stem, are digitate, palmate or bi-digitate, with lobes often 

 deeply incised. 



The Ivies (fig. 208-212) have also nearly the flower of Panax, 

 especially those which have as many ovarian cells as petals, and 

 almost always the ruminate albumen of Cussonia. In the common 

 Ivy, the floral receptacle is obconical and bears on its margin five 

 small indistinct dentiform sepals ; five triangular and valvate petals, 

 divided internally by a middle ridge into two cavities which receive 

 each a half-anther in the bud; five alternate stamens, the filaments 

 . of which are inserted in an opening in the margin of the epigynous 

 flat-conical' disk which surrounds the style, and whose anthers are 

 bilocular, introrse, oscillant. The style is conical, divided at the 

 summit by five small furrows into five indistinct stigmatiferous lobes, 

 and the inferior ovary has five oppositipetalous cells. At the top of 

 the internal angle is inserted a descending ovule, with micropyle 

 exterior and superior, above which the funicle thickens to a short 

 obturator. The fleshy fruit encloses a variable number of seeds. 

 The Ivy is a shrub which clings to trees and stones by means of 



