88 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
all along dilated into a very narrow membranous wing. The genus 
consists of unarmed trees from tropical Africa.’ 
Batesia,’ too, has nearly the flowers of a Sclerolobium: five free im- 
bricate sepals, as many subequal imbricate petals, and ten stamens 
inflexed in the bud, so that their anthers are then lodged in the 
cavity of the receptacle between the disk lining its wall and the foot 
of the ovary. The linear anther-cells are applied to a thick con- 
nective, and the form of the gyneceum is altogether peculiar. Its 
foot, which is central, is obliquely dilated above into an elliptical 
inclined plane edged with down; this bears a pauciovulate ovary, 
scarcely tapering at the apex into a style which is at once truncated, 
and stigmatiferous and ciliate at the end. The pod is bowed coriaceous 
and turgid, dehiscent by a single cleft, and contains two or three 
compressed seeds whose embryo is surrounded by albumen. The 
only known Batesia’ is a tree from North Brazil with imparipinnate 
leaves and ramified terminal racemes. 
Next to Batesia we have placed a reduced type which AvBLer 
named Vouacapoua' (figs. 60-62), and which is to Sclerolobium and 
Batesia exactly what Zuccagnia is to Cesalpima.’ The receptacle, 
the pentamerous imbricate calyx and corolla, are those of the two 
former genera. The androceum, too, consists of ten stamens, of 
which the five oppositipetalous are the shorter; but their filaments 
are erect and the cells of their sagittate anthers diverge below. 
The gyneceum has lost the obliquely dilated foot of Bafesia, and is 
directly inserted into the bottom of the receptacle ; its ovary contains 
only a single descending anatropous ovule, whose micropyle is up- 
wards and outwards. ‘The ovary tapers above into a style, leaning 
slightly towards the placenta, and possessing at its apex a little cavity 
with a ciliate circular rim (fig. 62). V. americana, the only known 
species of this genus, has not only the panicled inflorescence and 
the flowers themselves like those of most Connaracee, but also their 
1 TuL., in Arch. Mus., iv. 120.—Watp., Rep., 
v. 562. The three described species of this 
genus, BeytHam would rather make mere 
* AuBL., Guian., Suppl., 9, t. 373.—H. Bn., 
in Adansonia, ix. 206, t. iv. 
5 This character, strictly applied, might have 
varieties ‘of the single species R. procera PREsL. 
(Ramirezia cubensis A. Ricu.). 
2 Spruce, ex B. H., Gen., 563, u. 300. 
3B. erythrosperma Bunte., in Trans. Linn. 
Soc., xxv. 302, t. 37.— Tachigalia erythrosperma 
SPRUCE, exs., n. 2780. 
placed them in Copatferee, as has been done to 
Zuceagnia, but its affinities with Batesia seem 
to us far closer. Batesta is perhaps really only 
aspeciesof Vowacapoua with a pluriovulate ovary, 
so that it should form a simple section of the 
genus characterized by this feature, and also by 
the oblique dilatation at the base of the foot of 
the ovary. 
