320 



NATURAL HISTORY OP PLANTS. 



Sabieea {Paiima) guianensis. 



Fig. 310. Long. sect, of flower. 



to six, a valvate corolla, and an ovary the cells of which are often 

 the same in number as the divisions of the corolla, to which they are 

 superposed, more rarely less. The style is divided above into the 

 same number of branches, and the fruit is fleshy. They are generally 



cliinbing plants, natives of the 

 tropical regions of both worlds. 

 The ovarian cells are often in- 

 complete, and so also are those 

 (ive in number) of Patima, from 

 Guyana, the calyx of which is 

 truncate, and which, with us, 

 forms a section of the genus 

 Sabicea. Stipularia, hairy shrubs 

 of tropical Africa, has a 2-5- 

 celled ovary ; it is only a Sabicea 

 whose contracted axillary cymes 

 have bracts developed to a large 

 cup-shaped involucre. Schizo- 

 stigma is a near neighbour of 

 Stipularia without the large 

 involucral bracts. But the five divisions of the calyx, equal or 

 unequal, have the form of leaves, narrowed to a petiole at the base 

 and persistent. The corolla is valvate; the ovarian cells are five in 

 number (more rarely six or seven), stylary branches the same, and 

 the fruit is indehiscent, more or less fleshy. The flowers are in 

 axillary glomerules, many-flowered in Pentaloncha and Temnopteryx 

 which represent the African sections of Schizostigma. 



Urophyllum has small axillary flowers, in cymes or glomerules, an 

 ovary of two to five pluriovulate cells surmounted by a small calyx 

 with 4-8 short teeth, and a sm'all subrotate corolla with 4-8 valvate 

 lobes. . The fruit is a small berry. The flowers are often unisexual. 

 The ovarian cells are sometimes incomplete, particularly in a species 

 with few-flowered inflorescence and dicarpellar gynsecium, from 

 western tropical Africa, distinguished under the name of Pauridiantha. 

 Aulacodiscus, inhabiting Malacca, has nearly all the characters of 

 Urophyllum. The flower may have as many as flfteen parts, and the 

 corolla is formed of short almost independent petals. The flowers 

 are diclinous and the sterile stamens of the female flower are 

 incurved upon the margin of a well developed and lobed epigynous 



