NOTES. 
ON THE JULIANIACEAE, A NEW NATURAL ORDER OF PLANTS. 
(Abstract.) 1 — I. General Description. The Julianiaceae comprise, so far as at 
present known, two genera and five species. They are resiniferous, tortuously 
branched, deciduous, dioecious shrubs or small trees, having alternate, exstipulate, 
imparipinnate leaves, from about one to three decimetres long, clustered at the tips of 
the flowering branches and scattered along the short barren shoots. The flowers are 
small, green or yellow-green, quite inconspicuous, and the males are very different 
from the females. The male inflorescence is a more or less densely branched axillary 
panicle or compound catkin, from 2-J to 15 cm. long, with weak, thread-like, hairy 
branches and pedicels. The male flowers are numerous, 3 to 5 mm. in diameter and 
consist of a simple, very thin perianth, divided nearly to the base into four to nine 
narrow equal segments, and an equal number of stamens alternating with the 
segments. In structure and appearance they are almost exactly like those of the 
common oak. The female inflorescence is similar in structure to that of the sweet 
chestnut, consisting of an almost closed, usually five-toothed involucre, borne on 
a flattened pedicel and containing three or four collateral flowers, of which the two 
outside ones are, perhaps, always abortive. 
At the flowering stage, the female inflorescences including the narrow flattened 
pedicel and the exserted styles, are about 2 cm. long, and, as they are seated close in 
the axils of the crowded leaves and of the same colour, they are easily overlooked. 
The female flowers are destitute of a perianth, and consist of a flattened, one-celled 
ovary, terminated by a trifid style and containing a solitary ovule. The ovule in both 
genera is a very peculiar structure. I will first describe that of Juliania. In the 
flowering stage it is a thin, flat, obliquely horseshoe-shaped or unequally two-lobed 
body, about 2 mm. in its greatest diameter, attached to the base of the cell. At a little 
later stage, in consequence of unequal growth, it is horizontally oblong, nearly as 
large as the mature seed, that is 6 to 8 mm. long, and almost symmetrically two-lobed 
at the top. A vascular bundle or strand runs from the point of attachment to the 
placenta upwards near the margin into one of the lobes. In this lobe the embryo is 
tardily developed, and at this stage it is more or less enclosed in the opposite lobe, 
the relations of the two being as nozzle and socket to each other. It is assumed that 
the whole of this body, with the exception of the lobe in which the embryo is formed, 
is a funicle with a unilaterally developed appendage, which breaks up and is absorbed 
during the development of the ovule into seed. A similar growth and transformation 
is unknown to me in any other natural order. 
1 Read before the Royal Society on June 28, 1906. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XX. No. LXXX. October, 1906.] 
