318 NATURAL SISTORY OF PLANTS. 



is divided into the same number of stigmatiferous branches. The 

 fruit is said to be fleshy. It is so or more or less dry in Hoffmannia 

 which has an imbricate corolla with four or five lobes, sometimes 

 very thin at the margin, and generally two multiovulate cells in the 

 ovary with the same number of stylary branches. They are glabrous 

 or hairy shrubby or herbaceous plants of tropical America, especially 

 of Mexico, with axillary cymes, pedunculate or sessile and contracted 

 as in those named Xerococcus. 



Cateshcea forms here a small group in which the flowers, very 

 small, have an angular and 4-lobed, tubular-campanulate corolla, 

 with four lobes imbricate at the margin, although described as 

 valvate. The four stamens are inserted near the base of the corolla, 

 and the ovary, surmounted by a style bidentate at the summit, 

 contains in each of its two complete or incomplete cells, an indefinite 

 number of ovules, generally descending. The fruit is a coriaceous 

 berry. Cateshcea iahahits the Antilles; they are glabrous, spinous 

 shrubs, with small leaves, almost none, even in that named 

 Phyllacantha, whose spinescent axillary branches are triangular and 

 much compressed vertically as in some Rhamnacece of the genus 

 CoUetia. 



Gonzalagunia, woody or herbaceous plants of tropical America, 

 has flowers with a fiinnel-shaped or hypocrateriform corolla, a 

 narrow tube and a hmb with four or five imbricate lobes. The fruit 

 is a drupe or berry, and the flowers, often dimorphous, are grouped 

 on the common axis, simple or branched, of a long and slender 

 terminal spike. Isertia, also tropical American, has flowers in con- 

 struction nearly like those of the preceding but larger. The corolla, 

 thick and coriaceous, has four, five or six lobes, imbricate or valvate, 

 the hollows often projecting outwards. The ovarian cells vary from 

 two to six in number, as in Hamelia, and the fruit is fleshy. The 

 exterior surface of the corolla is often rugose or even tubercled, as 

 in Gassapa, which is only an Isertia with a valvate corolla and an 

 ovary generally bilocular. 



Mussaenda (fig. 308, 309) has also given name to a tribe (Mussa- 

 endece). It differs from the preceding genera chiefly in the prefloration 

 of the corolla, which is valvate, more or less reduplicate, but the 

 lobes may be contorted at the extremity. The fruit is generally 

 fleshy and indehiscent, sometimes dry, and then indehiscent or 

 loculicidal; this proves that these fruit-characters have here no 



