402 WILLIS: MORPHOLOGY OP THE PODOSTBMACEÆ 
thin and membranons. Bracts are thus formed as in Hydro- 
bryum. In that genus the free blade of the leaf usually 
falls off early, so that it can rarely be found in January, but 
in Farmeria this is not, as a rule, the case, and the bracts 
have leafy ends until the water falls so low as to expose them 
to the air, when the free ends wither and fall off. In the 
centre of the bud thus formed by the bracts the flower 
gradually develops within its spathe. By the end of the 
wet season in December or January it is ready to open as 
soon as exposed by the fall of the water. 
The flower is quite prostrate, as in Hydrobryum sessile, 
only the stigmas and the long stamen emerging and bending 
upwards out of the spathe, which splits like that of Hydro- 
bryum on the upper side. The stigmas are very long and 
subulate. The stamen is single, as is occasionally the case in 
Hydrobryum (PI. XXXYlI.,fig. 4). The chief interest of the 
flower is in the ovary, which is quite different from that of 
the rest of the order, so far as yet known. It is bilocular, 
but much more dorsiventral than any other, the lower 
loculus being more or less abortive, without ovules, and 
displaced towards the stylar end in the ovary (PI. XXXYII., 
hg. 9). From the base of the ovary springs a short stalk, 
which bears a large swollen placenta tilling the distal end 
of the upper loculus of the ovary, the septa being on its 
lower side and converging towards the stalk. The basal end 
of the placenta is flattened (figs. 5, 6), and bears two large 
ovules filling up the basal end of the loculus, themselves 
flattened against the placenta (fig. 7). The tissues of the 
placenta are closely packed with starch, and there is thus an 
abundant supply of food ready for the ripening of the seed, 
as the bulk of the placenta is quite as great as that of the two 
ovules or the seeds which result from them. 
The flower is as usual anemophilous. The ovary ripens to 
a fruit of about the same size as itself (fig. 8) with two large 
seeds, borne on the rather shrivelled placenta. The pericarp 
is thin and membranous, and does not dehisce. As the fruit 
