304 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



two branches, and the albumen is more or less deeply ruminate. 

 They are all shrubs of tropical eastern Africa, continental and insular, 

 with flowers in axillary cymes or glomerules often accompanied with 

 pairs of connate bracts forming a sort of calicule. 



Beside Gremaspora are ranged Aulacocalyx and Belonophora, shrubs 

 of tropical western Africa, which have axillary cymes, and a two-celled 



ovary with ovules of Ganthium. The 

 Oremaspora microcarpa. former has pointed sepals and ex- 



serted stamens, whilst in the latter 

 the calycinal divisions are shorter, 

 obtuse, and the stamens shorter. 

 With us these form only two sec- 

 tions of the same genus. Their 

 fruit is unknown. Galiniera, an 

 Abyssinian shrub, which is in the 

 same case and whose inflorescences 

 are also axillary cymes, has penta- 

 merous flowers, with a contorted 

 corolla and two ovarian cells, sur- 

 mounted by a style which may 

 divide into two branches. Each 

 of its cells may contain, it is said, 

 two descending ovules ; but most 

 frequently there is in reality only one as in the preceding genera. 

 The style has longitudinal prominences in the form of narrow wings, 

 more marked in the plant of Zanzibar called, for that reason, 

 Ehabdostigma ; and Octotropis, of Travancore, may be considered as a 

 Rhabdostigma with tetramerous flowers, eight stylary ridges and two 

 incomplete ovarian cells. 



With the same gynseCium and a general floral organization quite 

 analogous. Alberta, trees of Madagascar and southern Africa, have 

 sepals of which two, three or four are accrescent above the fruit in 

 membranous spathulate and veined wings. The style is long fusiform, 

 and the inflorescences are terminal. The same is the case with 

 Nematostylis, a shrub of Madagascar, of which only one of the five 

 sepals becomes foliaceous, the corolla is contorted and the long 

 exserted style divides above into irwo lobes; so that this plant 

 connects the preceding types with those of Ixora the ovule of which 

 is more or less distinctly descending. Lamprothamnus, a shrub of 



Fig. 295. Flower, one ovarian cell open. 



