RHAMNACE^. 279 



(12 to 14 pairs) rather prominent and ferrugineous, and the inter- 

 mediate veinlets closely and conspicuously reticulated. Petioles an inch 

 long. Stipides minute, subulate, caducous. Cymes axillary and ter- 

 minal, much shorter than the leaves, many-flowered, the branches 

 somewhat unilateral. Pedicels about the length of the calyx. 

 Bracts minute. Calyx nearly flat when expanded, 2 to 3 lines in 

 diameter, with a very short and somewhat turbinate tube, clothed with 

 a whitish or ferrugineous tomentum externally ; the limb five-parted; 

 lobes triangular-ovate, three-nerved by transmitted light, valvate in 

 aestivation, plane, except near the apex inside, which is abruptly 

 appendiculate with a salient fleshy crest. Dish flat, fleshy, filling the 

 throat of the calyx, and adherent to the surface of the ovary, which it 

 covers, its border obscurely 10-crenulate ; its centre a little hairy at 

 the point of junction with the styles. Petals 5, unguiculate, convolute 

 and cucullate, obovate, or at length spatulate, entire, or barely retuse, 

 greenish or white, nearly equalling the lobes of the calyx in length, 

 inserted on the margin of the disk. Stamens 5, inserted with the petals 

 and enclosed by them, nearly equalling them in length: filaments 

 filiform : anthers hvo-celled, didymous ; the cells opening longitudinally, 

 parallel, conspicuously pointed at their base, in a manner not observed 

 in any other genus of the order. Ovary two-celled, rarely three-celled, 

 coherent with the calyx-tube : styles short, distinct or nearly so : stigmas 

 simple. Ovules solitary, erect, anatropous; the rhaphe ventral. 

 Fruit a globose, baccate drupe, 4 or 5 lines in diameter, girt at the base 

 with the persistent, circumscissile tube of the calyx, which forms a kind 

 of cupule. Nucules 2, or sometimes 3, in a thin pulp, crustaceous, 

 plano-convex, dehiscent down the ventral suture after the drying of 

 the pulp, and partly down the dorsal suture also, thus imperfectly 

 two-valved, often falling away so as to leave the seeds borne on the 

 persistent cupulate base, enclosed in its loose, chestnut-brown, shining, 

 chartaceo-membranaceous, fragile arillus, if such it be : this is fissile 

 down the inner side, and is adherent to the seed only at the hilum. 

 The seed is plano-convex, with no evident rhaphe : the smooth testa 

 crustaceous or bony. Embryo straight, nearly the length of the thin 

 and fleshy albumen. Cotyledons oval, foliaceous, flat. Radicle short, 

 inferior, not perceptibly incurved. 



Plate 22, A. — Alphitonia zizyphoides: summit of a flowering 

 branch. Fig. 1. A flower, enlarged. 2. Vertical section of the same. 





