RUBIAGE^.. 271 



matter. Putoria, very small shrubs of the Mediterranean region, 

 with flowers in terminal umbelliform cymes, has a tetramerous 

 corolla, with an elongate, sometimes slightly curved, tube, four 

 stamens inserted in the throat of the corolla, and a bilocular ovary, 

 surmounted by a long style attenuate at the summit and there only 

 divided into two unenlarged stigmatiferous teeth. The fruit is a 

 drupe with two putamens. In Phyllis (fig. 239),, the only known 

 species of which inhabits the isles off the north-west coast of Africa, 

 the flowers are polygamous and in cymes ordinarily compound, ter- 

 minal and axillary. In the hermaphrodite flowers, the ovary is 

 surmounted by a corolla with four or five valvate divisions, four or 

 five alternate epigynous stamens, with slender filaments and introrse 

 anthers, and encloses two cells; the sepals are very small or rudi- 

 mentary, or even totally wanting. The two stylary branches are 

 divergent and bristle with papillae. The fruit is dry and separates 

 into two monospermous and indehiscent cocci. The androecium or 

 gynsecium is more or less aborted in the other flowers according as 

 they are female or male. It is a small undershrub with opposite or 

 verticillate leaves, the stipules of which very generally bear small 

 dark glands. 



The Operculanas (fig. 240-245), with many authors, have formed 

 a separate tribe (Operculariece), because their inflorescence resembles 

 a capitule and the uniovulate ovarian cells are solitary in each flower. 

 The inflorescences are in reality contracted cymes united in heads, 

 in which the receptacles of the different flowers are connate. In 0. 

 umbellata (fig. 240, 241), in each inflorescence of which the flowers 

 are less numerous, generally only three, belonging to two different 

 generations, the two sexes are united in the same flower, which has 

 a 3-5-merous corolla, a corresponding number of stamens or nearly 

 so, inserted at the bottom of the tube, and a style divided above into 

 two branches, one of which may be a little smaller than the other 

 or even disappear altogether. The compound fruit is formed of 

 monospermous capsules, dehiscing in a manner quite peculiar (fig. 

 242-245). In the other Operculanas, the flowers are more nume- 

 rous, and polygamous, but the capsules are the same and open in the 

 same manner, though generally more numerous in each compound 

 fruit. All the Operculanas are Australian, herbaceous or subshrubby, 

 sometimes climbing, often of a foetid odour, with opposite rarely 



