90 



nerved or 3 — 5-nerved with oblique lateral nerves, usually 

 narrow, seldom petioled : flowers white, greenish or dirty 

 yellow or red, small : inflorescence terminal, when the leaves 

 are opposite, usually indefinite with alternate leaves, flowers 

 then spiked or capitate, or arranged in extra-axillary spike- 

 lets : peduncle connate with the floral leaf: bracteoles usually 

 2, lateral, accompanying a solitary flower or lateral flowers 

 in a cymelet : pedicels none or short : fruit small and 

 caducous. 



GENUS I. PYRTJLAEIA. 



Polygamic I>ioecia« Sex : Syst : 



Gen. Chab. Flowers hermaphrodite or unisexual, males sub- 

 globose below, females turbinate: calyx 5 — 4-eleft, valvate in 

 aestivation : hairs long, entangled, or an ovate fimbriated scale 

 stretching from the base of each lobe to the anther, and there 

 adhering to the hairs : stamens opposite the lobes, inserted at 

 their base : filament short, sometimes 2-forked at the apex : 

 anther ellipsoid, 2-celled, cells very distinct, dehiscing, disc cup- 

 shaped, 5-lobed at the margin, lobes ovate, obtuse, alternating with 

 the tubes of the calyx : ovary half inferior in hermaphrodite, infe- 

 rior in the female flowers : ovules 2 — 3, pendulous or divergent 

 from the apex of the placenta : style enclosed, apex 2 — 3 lobed in 

 hermaphrodite flowers, depresso-capitate in females : drupe inferior, 

 pear-shaped, putamen thin, warty, 1-seeded : albumen fleshy, oily : 

 embryo minute : radicle inferior. — Trees or shrubs : leaves alter- 

 nate, entire : spikes or racemes long, pubescent : flowers sessile 

 or pedicelled in the axil of a bract, externally pilose. 



(1) P. "Walliohiana. (Alph. Bee.) 



Ident. Dec. prod. XIV. p. 629.— W. and A. in Ed. Journ. XV. 

 p. 180. 



Syn. Scleropyrum" "Wallichianum, Am. — Sphserocarya "Wal- 

 Hchiana, B. W. 'Cat. No. 948.— Idu MuUi, Bheeie. 



Engra/v. Eheede Mai. IV. t. 18.— Wight's Icon. t. 241. 



Spec. Chab. Large tree, here and there thorny : leaves ovate 

 or ovate-lanceolate, acute or obtuse : male rachis dense-flowered : 

 spikes axillary, solitary, twin or ternate, 2 — 3 times shorter than 

 the leaf : bracts pubescent externally, lanceolate, under each male 

 flower : tube of the male perianth turbinate, female obconical. 



Malabar. 



