720 PHANEROGAMIA. 



footstalks of 6 to 15 lines long. Common petiole 2 or 3 inches long. 

 Peduncle terminal, short; bearing an inflorescence shorter than the 

 leaves, consisting of a large number of small and short-peduncled, 

 several-flowered umbels, crowded in a thyrsoid panicle. Bracts and 

 bractlets caducous. Pedicels about a line and a half long, dilated 

 into a 3-5-angled or toothed small calyculus at the articulation with 

 the flower. Flower-buds 2 lines long, glabrous : the flowers poly- 

 gamous, or mostly hermaphrodite. Calyx with an obpyramidal 

 three-angled or occasionally 4-5-angled tube j the limb truncate, very 

 short, repand. Petals 5, ovate-triangular, valvate in aestivation, 

 expanding in an thesis, early deciduous. Stamens 5, not longer than 

 the petals : anthers two-celled, incumbent. Ovary three-celled or 

 four-celled by abortion (the cells more or less unsymmetrical), rarely 

 two-celled, more commonly five-celled, with a solitary anatropous 

 ovule suspended from the summit of each cell. Style in the sterile 

 flowers abortive, in the hermaphrodite flowers none, besides the short 

 and conical stylopodium, bearing 3, 4, or often 5 (sometimes 2 ?) 

 oblong, at first connivent, in fruit divergent, introrse stigmas. Drupe 

 as large as a small pea, fleshy, 3-5-angled in the dried state, contain- 

 ing, 3, 4, or 5 pyrenm, of a coriaceous texture. Albumen corneous- 

 fleshy. Embryo minute, next the hilum, cordate. 



The var. (3., which is undoubtedly the Panax? ovatum of Hooker 

 and Arnott (who had seen only foliage), is evidently a state of the 

 species with only three leaflets, which are usually subovate and barely 

 denticulate or entire. 



Plate 90. — Hedera Gaudichaudi : var. a., in flower, and var. /?., 

 in fruit, of the natural size. Fig. 1. An unexpanded flower, with its 

 calyculus and pedicel. 2. Vertical section of an expanded flower. 

 3. Flower (the petals and stamens fallen), with 3 stigmas. 4. 

 Transverse section of the same. 5. Transverse section of a nearly 

 symmetrically three-celled ovary. 6. A drupe. 7. Transverse sec- 

 tion of the same. 8. A pyrena. 9. Vertical section of the same, 

 showing the minute embryo. 10. Embryo, detached. — The details 

 variously magnified. 



4. Hedera platyphylla. (Tab. 91.) 

 H.fruticosa; foliis plerisque oppositls trifoliolatis longissime petiolulatis 



