BTTBIACE^ 



319 



absolute value. It is the same with the insertion of the stamens ; 

 for sometimes the filaments spring from a variable height of the 

 corolla, and sometimes they are inserted quite at the bottom of the 

 tube and remain attached to it to a considerable extent by the hairs 



Musseenda Landia, 



Fig. 308. Mower. (I). 



Fig. 309. Long. sect, of flower. 



with which it is covered. And even in Acranthera, with us Asiatic or 

 Oceanic Mussaendas, herbaceous or subshrubby, the filaments quit 

 the tube of the corolla from the base and become attached round the 

 style. The flowers of Mussaenda are in terminal clusters of cymes, 

 stipitate or contracted. They are natives of all tropical regions of 

 the old world. Polysolenia is an Indian Mussaenda whose inflorescence 

 is contracted to a terminal false capitule and the elongate tube of 

 the corolla is enlarged a little below the expansion of the limb. 

 Adenosacme has, on a smaller scale, the flowers of Mussaenda, with a 

 corolla of 4-6 lobes, valvate-reduplicate. The 2-6-celled ovary 

 becomes a fleshy or coriaceous fruit, indehiscent or loculicidal, and 

 the compound cymes are axillary and terminal. They are feeble 

 shrubs, natives of India and the Indian Archipelago. 



Sahicea (fig. 310) is the type of a small group in which the inflo- 

 rescences are in compound axillary often contracted cymes. The flo-^^'ers 

 have calycinal lobes, often unequal, varying in number from three 



