FLORA OF ADEN. 
338 
tomentose. Petals thin, membranous, fa inch long. Stamens 5. Fe- 
male flowers : Sepals T V inch long by fa inch wide at the base, triangular, 
very acute, stellately tomentose. Petals as the sepals but much narrower 
and shorter, stellately tomentose. Ovary clothed with stellate tomentum 
and silvery scales ; styles 3, erect, y 1 ^ inch long, 2-fid to about ^ way 
down, stellately tomentose outside. 
Capsules i inch in diameter, clothed with stellate tomentum and 
silvery scales. Seeds roughly tuberculate. 
Locality : — Plain of Maala, ravine near the mosque of Shaikh Idrus 
(Schweinf.); Biggari Valley (Defl.); upper end of the great valley be- 
tween Steamer-Point and town (Marchesetti) ; without locality (Hook., 
Hildebrandt, Birdw.). 
Distribution .-—Sinai, Egypt, Nubia, Libya, Abyssinia, Kordofan, 
Somaliland, Socotra, Central and S. Arabia, Muscat, Sind, Punjab, 
Kashmir, 
5. Riciims Linn. 
A tall glabrous annual, sometimes shrubby or subarboreous. Leaves 
alternate, broad, palmately 7-many-lobed, serrate. 
Flowers large, in terminal subpanicled racemes, monoecious, apetalous 
upper male crowded, lower female. Disk 0, Male flowers *. Calyx mem- 
branous, splitting into 3 — 5 valvate segments. Stamens very many, 
filaments crowded, variously connate or in branching clusters ; anther- 
cells distinct, distant, subglobose, divergent. Pistillode 0. Female 
flowers : Calyx spathaceous, caducous. Ovary 3-celled ; styles short 
or long, spreading, often very large, entire 2-fid or 3-partite, feathery 
papillose ; cells 1-ovuled. 
Capsule of 3 bivalved cocci. Seeds oblong ; testa crustaceous ; al- 
bumen fleshy ; cotyledons broad, flat. 
Specie S' 
Distribution .- — Tropics generally, probably indigenous in Africa. 
1, Riciims communis L, Sp. PL 1007 ; Muell.-Arg. in DC. Prodr. 
XV, 2. 1017. 
Bicinus inermis Jacq. Ic. Bar.* I, t. 195. 
Bicinus lividus Jacq. Ic. Bar. I, t. 196. 
Bicinus speciosus Burm. FI. Ind. 307, t. 63, f. 2. 
Bicinus spectabilis Blume Bijd. 623. 
Bicinus viridis Willd. Hort. Berol. t. 49. 
Croton spinosus Linn. Sp. PI. 1005. 
Names : — Khirva, Gar (Arabic), Castor-oil Plant, Palma Christi, 
Bicin de Palma Christi. 
Locality : — Shaikh CFthman (Defl.). Probably naturalized. 
