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WILLI8 : PODOSTBMACEÆ 
Fruit smooth, anisolobous, dehiscent, with co seeds. Thallus 
small, closely attached. Secondary shoots crowded, erect, 
with 4-ranked scales and solitary terminal flowers. Spathe 
bifid at tip. 
Flower zygomorphic, naked, sessile. Stamens 2, monadelphous, 
equalling or exceeding ovary and stigmas, with two staminodes. Ovary 
ellipsoid. Stigmas 2, subulate (or lobed, fide Beddome), smooth, 
equalling or shorter than ovary. Capsule smooth, but with slight rib 
in centre of each valve, anisolobous, sessile, but often apparently on 
a short or long pedicel owing to the falling away of the cortex and 
upper scales of secondary shoot ; one valve deciduous, the other 
persistent on a bifid stalk when the non- vascular tissues fall away. 
Seeds go. 
Primary axis not known (? see below). Thallus small, crustaceous, 
fleshy, to 2-3 cm. in diameter, irregularly lobed or branched, usually 
more or less ribbon-like, closely attached to the rock by hairs and 
haptera, with crowded erect secondary shoots forming a dense tuft. 
On each plant in the vegetative season at least one, and perhaps, but 
doubtfully, more, axis with non-scaly leaves, the other axes all with 
scaly leaves. Axis of the first type probably primary, usually non- 
floriferous, simple or rarely branched, to 50 cm. long, cylindrical, to 
5 mm. thick, leafless below when fully grown, thickly leafy above, 
especially at the tip ; leaves not sheathing but often more or less 
decurrent, in complex phyllotaxy, to 5-8 or more cm. long, loriform. 
Axes of second type numerous, densely crowded, endogenous, erect to 
2-10 cm. high, stiffly rigid in flowering season at any rate, closely 
covered with 4-ranked decussate triquetrous scales. Scales acute rigid, 
with long loriform leafy tips similar to the leaves of the first type 
of axis, the tips ultimately deciduous and usually only present in the 
upper few leaves. Tip of axis occasionally scaleless with leaves as on 
the primary axis, but usually bearing one flower sessile among the upper 
scales. Spathe urceolate, bidentate at tip, the teeth in a plane at right 
angles to the uppermost pair of leaves, circumscissile with deciduous 
tip. 
S. India and Burma, rare. 
A very curious genus, until lately only known from the 
Anamalais, but I found in the Calcutta herbarium some 
fruits of a Willisia from Burma. It was originally found by 
Beddome, and described and figured by him as Mniopsis 
selaginoides, on account of its smooth fruit. Weddell trans- 
ferred it to Dicræa, with which it has very little in common, 
and Bentham, in uniting this genus witli Podostemon, 
