Gissampelos.'] 
MENISPERMACEiE. 
5 
into a peltate^ disk ; the female with two small free or connate petals, 
one large sepal and a single ovoid carpel opposite the petal with a trifid 
stigma. Fruit fleshy, filled with a single sparingly albuminous seed 
curved round the condyle. — Slender climbers, with very minute cymose 
male and racemose female flowers. Distrib. Everywhere in the 
tropics. Species estimated by Hooker and Bentham at 18, by Miers 
at 70. 
1. C. Pareira, Linn. ; var. matjritiana. Hk. fil. and Thoms. FI. 
Ind. i. 198. A wide-climbing slender shrub, densely pilose on all the 
foliar organs, branches, and even ovary. Leaves long-petioled, round, 
deeply cordate, 2-4 in. broad, with a conspicuous mucro. Male flowers in 
densely-fascicled peduncle! lateral cymes ; female in long solitary 
flexuose racemes, in nearly sessile distant clusters, each hidden by a 
persistent bract, like a reduced leaf. Female flowers with two distinct 
round petals between the sepal and ampullseform ovary. Cissampelos 
mauritiana, Thouars; LG. Prod. i. 101. Dissopetalum mauritianum, 
Miers , Contrih. iii. 203, t. 117. 
Mauritius, in woods and thickets. Cissampelos Bojeriana , madagascariensis , mu- 
crouata (A. Rich.), and cordifolia (Bojer), Miers, Cont. iii. 181-4, to my eyes are 
simply forms of C. Pareira with the two petals connate. — Everywhere in the 
tropics, as here understood, hut this considered by Miers to include some 50 distinct 
species. Pareira brava. 
Oedee IV. *PAPAVERACEjE. 
* Argemone mexicana , Linn.; L.C. Prod. i. 120, now a common weed 
in the tropics, of American origin, an erect robust branched prickly 
annual with milky juice, sessile amplexicaul large sinuated leaves 
variegated green and white, 2-3 caducous sepals, 4-6 large obovate 
bright yellow petals, indefinite stamens, short prickly capsule with 4-7 
sessile radiant stigmas, is frequent through the islands. Ghardon 
du pays. 
Order IV. *FUMARIACE^. 
* Fumaria officinalis, Linn., the common European fumitory, a much 
branched annual weed, with alternate bipinnate leaves with small linear 
lobes, small red irregular flowers in simple racemes, two minute scale- 
like sepals, 4 connivent petals, one outer spurred at base, two inner 
spoon-shaped at the tip, 6 stamens in two bundles, and small round dry 
1-seeded indehiscent green fruit, is frequent in Mauritius. Fumeterre. 
Order V. NYMPKffiACEJE. 
Sepals 3-5. Petals and stamens mostly indefinite, free and hypo- 
gvnous, or adnate to the torus. Anthers 2-celled, adnate. Car- 
pels many, free or immersed in the receptacle, so as to form a 
spuriously syncarpous pistil ; ovules many, parietal ; stigmas radiating. 
