336 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



or nearly entire. They are shrubs of tropical Asia and Oceania ; 

 one growing as far as Kurdistan. The leaves are opposite or rarely 

 verticillate. The flowers are in clusters of cymes and the capsular 

 fruit is sometimes loculicidal, sometimes septicidal. 



Chalepophyllum guianense is also very near Rondehtia. Its axillary, 

 solitary and pedunculate flowers have an ovary with two multiovulate 

 cells, surmounted loj a persistent calyx with five oblong and rigid 

 lobes and an imbricate or contorted corolla bearing enclosed stamens. 

 The fruit is a septicidal capsule with angular and very short-winged 

 seeds. It is a shrub with small opposite obtuse coriaceous leaves, 

 resinous at the points and greyish on the surface when dry. 



In Augusta, glabrous trees and shrubs of southern Brazil, the 

 flowers have a long tubular corolla, straight or curved, with five 

 short and contorted lobes. In other respects, the flower closely 

 resembles those of Portlandia and Bikkia with narrow corollas. The 

 fruit is also, as in the latter, a capsule the coat of which unfolds in 

 two layers and the endoearp divides into four curled pannels. The 

 seeds are cubical or polyhedral. The flowers are in three-flowered 

 axillary cymes. In Lindeiria the corolla is still longer and more 

 slender, particularly the tube which is very narrow. The limb is' 

 hypocrateriform with flve contorted lobes. The stamens are exserted 

 and the coat of the pericarp unfolds, as in the preceding genus. 

 They are elegant shrubs of Mexico and New Caledonia with lanceo- 

 late leaves, connate intrapetiolar stipules and flowers in terminal 

 cymes. 



In the following genera the flowers are small and the corollas 

 short, as in Rondeletia, Bathysa, &c. That of Elmagia is subrotate, 

 with five contorted lobes, afterwards recurved. The exserted stamens, 

 with filament geniculate and hairy below, recall those of Chimarrhis 

 and Sickingia, the analogues of Elceagia among the types with 

 imbricate corolla, as well by their flowers as by their small loculicidal 

 capsules with bifid valves, and their inflorescences, still more com- 

 pound and ramified in Elmagia, large trees of Peru and Columbia 

 with resinous sap, Gb-eenea comprises erect or climbing shrubs of 

 tropical Asia and Oceania, glabrous or pubescent, whose small 

 capsules are similar to those of Elceagia, with angular compressed or 

 short-winged seeds, and whosp flowers, in long compound clusters of 

 cymes, partly uniparous, are small, sessile or nearly so, as in some 

 Oldenlnndias (Hekistocarpa, Leptoscelu, &c.). But tlie short corolla 



