288 



NATURAL HISTOBY OF PLANTS. 



Fig. 266. Three-flowered inflorescence (?). 



or shrubby plants witH opposite or verticillate leaves, has flowers in 

 terminal clusters or coryinbs of uniparous cymes. The calyx has 

 four sepals, free or united below, of which the two lateral may be 

 larger than the others, or exist alone as in Congdonia. The fruit is didy- 



mous or heart-shaped, 

 Thiersia insignis. finally dry, and the seeds, 



compressed, albuminous, 

 enclose a very small 

 claviform embryo. Lasi- 

 anthus, belonging to the 

 tropical regions of the 

 old world and excep- 

 tionally to Guyana and 

 the Antilles, consists of 

 shrubs generally hairy, 

 foetid, with opposite or 

 rarely verticillate leaves. The flowers, which are those of Uragoga, 

 are in axillary false verticils (of glomerules), 4-6-merous, with 

 enclosed or slightly exserted stamens, longer exserted (especially in 

 the males) than in those named Allmophania. The ovary is of 4^10 

 cells in the true Lasianthus, and bilocular in the Malagash species 

 called Saldinia, which we cannot separate generically from Lasianthus. 

 Saprosma has also opposite or more rarely verticillate leaves. The 

 flowers are sessile or pedicellate, axillary, solitary, ternate or united 

 in ramified cymes. In construction they resemble those Lasianthus, 

 with a bilocular ovary, often surrounded at the base with connate 

 bracts forming a small calicule. But the divisions of the corolla are 

 induplicate-valvate and thin in that portion occupying the interior of 

 the bud. They are foetid shrubs of tropical Asia and Oceania, 

 Myrmecodia consists of epiphytal shrubs of a peculiar habit growing 

 in the Indian Archipelago and other parts of tropical Oceania. The 

 rhizome (?), dilated to smooth or embossed or echinate tubercles, is 

 indented with cavities occupied by ants. The opposite leaves are 

 like those of the Bhizuphorem and are accompanied by small or large, 

 caducous or persistent, stipules. The flowers, axillary, solitary or in 

 glomerules, are constructed like those of a Uragoga or Lasianthus, 

 tetramerous, with a 3-5-celled ovary, 2-celled in those of which the 

 genus Hydnophytum has been formed. 



But the plants which have the most characters in common with 



