LAURACEZL. 435. 
dicecious or polygamous. The fruit isa berry, resting on the more or 
less decided concavity of a cupuliform receptacle with truncate edges, 
which never envelopes it to more than a third of its height (fig. 250). 
The seed is fleshy, and its embryo is exalbuminous. Ocotea belongs 
to the tropical and subtropical regions of America, excepting some 
species from Africa and the Canary Islands. Their leaves are 
opposite, usually thick, coriaceous, and penniveined. The flowers 
are small and numerous, collected into ramified racemes of cymes in 
the axils of the leaves or at the ends of the branches. About a 
hundred and fifty species of this genus' are known. 
Nectandra leucantha, Nectandra Puchury major. 
Fig, 251, Fig. 252. 
Stamen (4). Part of the embryo. 
Next to Ocotea come several genera only differing in the details 
of the behaviour of the pedicels, receptacle, and perianth after an- 
thesis: Strychnodaphne, Camphoromea, and Gymnobalanus. 
Nectandra (figs. 251-252), with the same floral organization, is at 
once distinguished by the thickness of the expanded, almost fleshy 
perianth, and the singular form of the stamens, whose four cells are 
placed in a nearly horizontal or curved row (fig. 251). Pleurothyrium 
and Dicypellium (of which the fertile androceum is still unknown) 
appear to differ from Neetandra in only secondary characters. — 
Synandrodaphne may be considered as Ocotea with the stamens 
coherent at the base. Symphysodaphne has also a monadelphous an- 
droceum, as in Acrodichdium and Misanteca, but there are only three 
fertile stamens, united into a tube with the anthers at the top. 
Sassafras’ (figs. 253-255) has the general organization of Ocotea 
1 Mztssn., Prodr., 112-1389; in Mart. Fl, Nexs, Syst., 487.—Enp1., Gen. n. 2056.— 
Bras., Laurqe., 103, t. 76-83 (Oreodaphne).. Meissn., Prodr., 170, 513.—Evosmus Nurt., . 
2 Baun., Pin, 431.—Ray, Hist. 1568.— Gen. Amer, i. 259. ae 
FF 2 
