FLORA OF ADEN. 
337 
XLVI1I.—H YDROCH A R IT AC EdE . 
Fresh or salt-water herbs, with undivided submerged or floating 
leaves. 
Flowers bisexual, monoecious or dioecious, enclosed in one or more 
spathes ; sepals 3, green or petaloid, valvate or induplicate in bud ; petals 
3 or 0 ; stamens 3 — 15 ; anthers erect. Ovary inferior, 1-celled, or 
partially 3-celled by projecting parietal placentas ; styles or style-arms 
3 — 12, ovules numerous, parietal, pendulous, anatropous or orthotropous. 
Fruit membranous or fleshy, often beaked ; seeds few or many ; 
endosperm 0 ; embryo various. 
Genera 14 ; species about 40. 
Distribution : Warm regions of the world. 
Halopliila Tliouars, 
Submerged, perennial, marine herbs ; rootstock slender, creeping, 
branched; leaves in pairs at the nodes of the rootstock or on short 
branches, with a hyaline amplexicaule sheath at the base, oval oblong or 
linear. 
Flowers very small, monoecious, axillary, in 2-leaved hyaline spathes. 
Male pedicelled ; sepals 3, ovate, imbricate, hyaline ; stamens 3, linear, 
4- celled ; pollen confervoid. Female flowers sessile ; sepals 3 on the 
apex of the beak of the ovary, most minute ; petals 0 ; ovary ovoid, 
membranous, produced into a slender erect beak, slightly dilated at the 
apex, 1-celled, full of viscous fluid ; styles 3, capillary, caducous ; ovules 
few or many, on 3 parietal placentas, anatropous. 
Fruit a beaked utricle ; seeds globose, translucent ; testa membranous, 
minutely tubercled ; embryo macropodous with the spirally coiled 
embryo in a pit at the top. 
Species about 10. 
1. Halopliila ovata Gaudich in Freyc. Voy. Bot. 430 (1826) ; Hook. 
FI. Brit. Ind. V, 663 ; Trim. FI. Ceyl. IY, 128. 
Halophila ovalis Hook. f. FI. Tasm. II, 45 ; Miq. FI. Ind. Bat. Ill, 
230 ; Boiss. FI. Or. V, 2 ; Benth. FI. Austral. VII, 182 ;f Aschers. in 
Nuov. Giornal. Bot. Ital. Ill, 301, et in Linnaea XXXY, 173. 
Barkania punctata Ehrb. Symb. Phys. Bot. in Abhandl. Berl. Akad. 
I, 429. 
Thalassia stipulacea Thw. Enurn. 332 (non Koen.) 
Caulinia ovalis R. Br. Prodr. 339. 
Kernera ovalis Room, et Schult. Syst, Veg. VII, 170. 
b 2 
