138 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 
companied by two pretty large lateral bractlets, which are connate 
in form, a sort of two-lipped sac below the flower. 
Most of the Cynometras, too, are easy to define when we know 
Copaifera: they are Copaivas with five imbricate petals. However, 
all the species are not exactly alike. In some the floral receptacle is 
slightly concave, giving a perigynous insertion to the sepals. These 
are pretty often five in number, the two posterior remaining separate. 
The androceum has sometimes more than five pieces, owing to the 
deduplication of some of them ;? and the filaments, instead of being 
wholly free, are sometimes slightly monadelphous at the base. The 
ovary contains one or two ovules, descending and anatropous, with 
the micropyles superior and exterior. The fruit is thick, short and 
straight, or bowed and reniform, often wrinkled or warty ; it contains. 
a large descending seed, whose coats inclose a fleshy exalbuminous 
embryo, with its superior radicle enveloped by the auricled bases of 
the cotyledons. Cynometra comprises some twenty specimens of un- 
armed trees from most tropical countries.* Their leaves are alternate 
paripinnate, with one or more pairs of unsymmetrical leaflets and 
with caducous stipules. The flowers are grouped in short racemes, 
often corymbose or subumbellate, inserted in the axils of the leaves 
or on the wood of the branches or trunk. Each flower, often 
accompanied by two coloured bractlets, is axillary to a bract, and at 
the bottom of the inflorescence these bracts are greatly developed, 
together forming a caducous involucre. There are often also two 
coloured bractlets. 
The small flowers of Pterogyne' have also five petals and five sepals. 
They are inserted round the rim of a little circular disk, and are 
imbricated’ in the bud. The ten stamens are free and similarly 
inserted ; they have introrse two-celled anthers of longitudinal dehis- 
1L., Gen. n. 519.—J., Gen., 350.—Lamz., Brnto., in Hook. Journ., ii. 99; in Trans. 
Dict., ii. 240, t. 331.—Gmrern., Fruct., ii. 350, 
t. 156.—DC., Prodr., ii. 509.—Spacu, Suit. @ 
Buffon, i. 117.— Envu., Gen., u. 6784.—B. H., 
Gen., 586, n. 367.— Metrocynia Dvv.-Tu., 
Gen, Nov. Madag., 22.—WC., op. cit., ti. 507.— 
Enpu., Gen., u. 6783.—Cynomorium Rumru., 
Herb. Amboin., i, 163, t. 62 (nec Micu.). 
2 Sometimes, too, there are ten stamens, which 
are not however all fertile, some of the posterior 
being reduced to filaments. 
3 Roxs., Pl. Coromand., iii. 286.—Hayne, 
Ayen., xi. t. 17 (Lrachylobium Martianum).— 
Linn, Soc., xxv. 318.—Hoox. F., Niger, 328. 
—A. Ricu., Fl. Cub., 232, t. 41.—Tun., in 
Arch. Mus., iv. 178.—A. Gray, Bot. Unit. 
States Expl. Exp., t. 52.—Watp., Rep., i. 853; 
v. 573; Ann, ii, 449; iv. 601.—Oxrv., Fl. 
Trop. Afr., ii. 316. 
4 Tun, in Ann. Sc. Nat., sér. 2, xx. 140; 
in Arch. Mus., iv, 130.—B. H., Gen., 586, 
n. 366. 
5 Usually the two lateral petals overlap, and 
the anterior and posterior are overlapped, on 
either edge. 
