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The Sesamum and Grapple Plant Family. 



(Pedaliace^.) 



Annual plants with simple, alternate, opposite leaves, fur- 

 nished with soft glandular hairs, rarely spiny. Flowers 

 generally large and showy, similar in character to Big- 

 noniacecB, the principal difference being in the fruit, which 

 at first is soft, becoming a 1 -seeded, hard, spiny, capsular 

 fruit, generally splitting, with 2 or more hooked appendages. 



About 25 species are enumerated of this family. They 

 are natives chiefly of the tropics, where they are widely 

 distributed, the greater number being found in Africa. 

 They are of a mucilaginous nature, the most important 

 being Sesamum Indicum^ an annual plant, native of the East 

 Indies, and now cultivated in many warm countries for the 

 sake of its seeds, which yield " Gingilic oil," used for many 

 purposes of domestic economy, and even for adulterating 

 olive oil. In gardens the family is represented by Mar- 

 tynia fragrans, and other species, having showy flowers like 

 foxglove. Allied to them is the Grapple plant (Uncaria 

 procumbens), native of the Cape of Good Hope. 



They are remarkable for their curious fruits, which 

 in Martynia when dry become hard and black, having two 

 stiff incurved hooks at one end from 1 to 2 inches or more 

 in length, formed by the splitting of the placenta, having 

 some resemblance to a stag beetle. In Uncaria the fruits 

 are more like a large spider with eight long legs ter- 

 minated with incurved hooks. The size of an average 

 fruit is about 3 inches each way. These hooks are 

 extremely troublesome to travellers, hooking into their 

 clothes, and are a torture to cattle by hooking into their 

 mouths. 



Pedalium murex. An annual, soft, succulent-leaved plant, 

 native of the coasts of the Western Peninsula of India and 

 Ceylon. It has a musky smell, and possesses the peculiar 

 property of imparting mucilage to water simply by the 



