35S 
A REVISION OF THE INDO-MALAYAN 
genus. In that respect the striking elongation of their floral receptacle 
particularly deserves to fix the attention. It constitutes a thick column 
along which the petals are attached by means of a prominent ridge. 
It has been variously called by the authors : a disk, a stipes, a gynandro- 
phore, a gynophore, — but none of these terms is really appropriate to it. 
In the first place that elongated receptacle is not homologous with the 
organs habitually designated as disks, for they are of appendicular 
nature, and, secondly, the fact of its being concrescent with the petals 
excludes the other denominations just mentioned. So a new term was 
to be found for it, and I, long ago, adopted that of column , suggested 
to me by the expression “ Receptaculum columnare ” formerly applied 
by Patrick Brown 1 to that special structure characterizing the flowers 
of all Cedrelas. It is true that the column is much shorter in the Asiatic 
and Malayan species than in the others. But such a vague character 
as the relative length of an organ cannot, in my opinion, be looked upon 
as having the value of a generic character. 
Now there is in the structure of the column itself a detail to which 
sufficient attention has not been paid yet. It consists in a curious con- 
crescence of the top of that organ with the base of the carpels ; the 
consequence of that concrescence being that the cells of the ovary get 
prolonged inside the column, so far down as to a little below the 
insertion of the stamens ; this character has first been noticed by 
Harms 2 in Toonas, and I have since ascertained that it exists in all 
Cedrelas without an exception. In other words, it can be said that in 
all of them the ovary is partially inferous. That being so, it now 
seems more natural to compare the length of the column to that of the 
cells than with that of the visible part of the ovary, and I shall do so 
henceforth in my descriptions. 
It is to be remarked that in almost all the species the ovules are all 
inserted in the upper part of the cells, that is to say, outside the column. 
In only three of them, of which one is American (C. bogotensis) and 
the others Indian (C. Toona var. Pealii ; C. Mannii) ) did I find that 
the lowest ovules are inserted in the inferous portion of the ovary. But 
in these species, as in all the others, that portion remains rudimentary 
during the evolution of the fruit, the capsule being entirely formed by 
the magnified free portion of the ovary. On the other hand the pro- 
longation of the cells into the column, although so very slightly marked 
and apparently useless, gains a systematic importance from the fact of 
its being a character common to all the species. 
1 History of Jamaica, p. 158. 
2 h c., p. 369, 
