LEGUMINOS2-CASALPINIEZ. 85 
consists of a thick dry coriaceous layer. Inside it contains a 
pretty large number of one-seeded chambers, each lined by a thin 
membrane which is also dry. But between these and the hard outer 
coat is a thick layer of cellular pulp which completely isolates the 
separate chambers.’ The ovoidal seeds are attached by slender 
filiform funicles of variable length and more or less bent on them- 
selves. Under the coriaceous seed-coats is a thick transparent horny 
albumen, in the centre of which is an embryo with large flattened 
oval cotyledons and a conical radicle. ‘The five or six species of this 
genus are trees from North America’ and temperate Asia and Africa.’ 
The branches and axes of the inflorescence are often transformed into 
strong simple or ramified spines.‘ The leaves may be some pinnate 
and some bipinnate on one and the same tree.’ The flowers form simple 
or ramified racemes in the axils of the leaves or on the wood of the 
branches. 
III. SCLEROLOBIUM SERIES. 
Sclerolobium’ (figs. 56-59) has regular hermaphrodite flowers. The 
receptacle forms an obconical or hemispherical cup of variable depth, 
Sclerolobiwm (Cosymbe) aureum. 
Fia. 56. 
Flower (4). 
Fie. 57. 
Longitudinal section of flower. 
lined by glandular tissue, which is sometimes covered with hairs. 
1 This represents the mesocarp; the fruit is 
hence a drupaceons pod. _ 
2 Dunam., Arbr., ii. t. 10; iii. t. 10.—Watp., 
Rep., i. 856. 
3 Benra., in Trans, Linn. Soc., xxv. 304,— 
Ottv., Fl. Trop. Afr., ii. 265. 
4 We have cited an example of this transfor- 
mation of the axes of inflorescence into branched 
spines in @. ferow (see Bull. Soc. Bot. de Fr,, v. 
316). 
5 Macarre, Sur la Soudure Natur. des Feuilles 
dw Gleditzia triacanthos (in Bibl. de Gten., xvii. 
142). Gleditschia has often been remarked as 
‘possessing in the axils of its single leaves several 
superposed buds, some being flower-buds, others 
leaf-buds. In @. triacanthos we may often find 
in one axil, first an inflorescence, below this a 
young branch, and still lower a younger Jeaf-bud. 
6 Voc., in Linnea, xi. 395.— ENDL., Gen, 
n. 6755.—B. H., Gen., 562, n. 296. 
