CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
219 
the corolla is 3-4 lines long, the lobes of the border 2 lines 
long, 1 line broad ; the filaments, dilated in the lower moiety, 
are fixed in the middle of the tube, 3 lines long, and therefore 
but little exserted ; the ovary is 1 line in diameter, supported 
on a narrow stipitate support | line long ; the lower portion of 
the style is 3 lines long, its branches 2 lines long ; the ten 
appendices (nearly equal in size, setiform, 1 line long) form 
an annular fringe round the base of the corolla. The drupe is 
more globular than in the preceding species, and the persistent 
calyx, which half encloses it, is split on one side to the base. 
Khabdia. 
This genus was founded by Von Martins, in 1826, upon a 
Brazilian plant which he described and figured in his Nov. 
Gen. ii. 136, tab. 195 ; he placed it in EJiretiaceoi^ where also 
it has been arranged by De Candolle and other botanists. 
Fresenius, in his memoir published thii-ty-one years aftei-wards 
in the ‘ Flora Brasiliensis,’ absolutely ignored the peculiar 
seminal structure, which had been so well described by Von 
Martins. His diagnosis of Rhahdia is very short and unac- 
countably incomplete ; he merely regarded it as an aberrant 
genus between Heliotropiem and Cordiacece. My own obser- 
vations fully confirm the accm-acy of the peculiar struc- 
tm-e of the fruit and seed as it is minutely described in the 
work of Von Martins. The placentation of the ovary is like 
that of Amerina ; that is to say, it is imilocular, with two op- 
posite parietal divisions, which project inwards towards the 
centre, where they do not meet, but are bifidly spread and 
turned backwards, each margin having a single ovule near its 
margin. The fruit is a succulent drupe containing four nucules, 
evidently at first combined together in pairs, and afterwards 
free ; upon one margin only of each nucule, always on the 
contiguous side of each pair, there is seen a fungous longitu- 
dinal line, which penetrates the cell through an open corre- 
sponding slit ; and upon this fungous line the single seed is 
attached, at a small spot halfway between the middle and the 
summit : this fungous line seems to be a part of the central 
columella seen in the ovary. The seed is long, pointed at both 
extremities, and on its outer integument a line of raphe is seen 
running from the point of its attachment to a small chalaza at 
the base ; its embryo, enveloped in solid albumen, has a small 
superior radicle and two oblong foliaceous cotyledons, with 
their face turned to the centre of the fruit. One important 
part of this structure is the axile column, or, as some woidd 
call it, the gynobase, although it is in the form of a spindle- 
