86 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
of trees from tropical Asia, Africa, and America,’ with alternate 
leaves and a very peculiar form of inflorescence. It consists of a 
sort of globular or pyriform capitulum (fig. 24), ending a long naked 
peduncle, either solitary axillary pendulous, or approximated to 
other similar peduncles to form a sort of terminal raceme. The 
whole of the swollen part of these inflorescences is covered with 
alternate, very closely imbricated bracts. Axillary to each is a com- 
pressed flower (fig. 27), which later on protrudes from the interval 
between the bracts, and if fertile expands its anthers and style 
outside. From the flowers at the base of the capitulum protrude 
coloured? monadelphous staminodes; the gyneceum is altogether 
absent, or reduced to a little sessile rudimentary ovary. 
Pentaclethra® has also pentamerous flowers with an imbrieate calyx 
and a valvate corolla; they are hermaphrodite or dicecious. The 
calyx, inserted at the very base of the flower, forms a sac whose 
mouth alone is divided into five deep teeth, obtuse at the apex and 
much overlapping. Internal to this is a hollow thick-walled cornet, 
with which the limb of the corolla and the stamens do not split off 
until a certain height.* Its cavity is lined by a glandular disk with 
five lobes or crenulations of variable form. The androceum consists 
in P. filamentosa,’ a species from tropical America, of ten stamens, 
monadelphous at the base, and superposed five to the petals, five to 
the calyx-lobes. This latter set alone are fertile, consisting of a 
filament free above, and an introrse two-celled anther of longitudinal 
dehiscence surmounted by a large depressed gland. The five other 
stamens are very long narrow exserted tongues, completely 
sterile. In P. macrophylla, on the contrary, from the west of 
tropical Africa, there is a larger number of pieces in the androceum, 
namely, five fertile alternipetalous stamens, the anther bearing an 
introrse gland between its two cells, and opposite each petal, instead 
of a single staminode, two or three slender subulate scales much 
1W., Spec, iv. 1025.—DC., Prodz., ii, 
442, n. 106.—Pat. Buavv., Fl. Ow. et Ben., 
ii. 58, t. 90.—Jacg., Stirp. Amer. t. 179, 
fig. 87.—Sas., in Trans. Hort. Soc., v. 444. 
3 BenTH., in Hook. Journ., ii. 127; iv. 330. 
—B.H., Gen., 588, 1004, u. 372.—H. Bn., in 
Adansonia, vi. 204.—Otntv., in Trans. Linn, 
—Roxs., Fl. Ind., ii. 551.—W. & Arn, 
Prodr., i. 279,—M1Q., Fl. Ind.-Bat., Suppl., i. 
283.—Watp., Rep. i. 857; Ann. ii. 449; 
iv. 612.—Oxtv., Fl. Trop. Afr., ii. 323. 
2 White or red, while the upper flowers are 
brownish, yellowish, or reddish. 
Soc., xxiv. 415, t. 37; Fl. Trop. Afr., ii. 323. 
4 So that there is some doubt as to the mor- 
phological signification of the base of this tube. 
5 Bentu., loc. cit., n. 1, 2—Watp., Rep., 
i, 857. 
6 Bentu., loc. cit., iv. 330.—Ottv., loc. cit. 
— Owala of the Gaboon River natives. 
