MelocJiict.\ 
STERCULIACE2E. 
31 
in Mauritius about Port Louis, and is common in the Seychelles and 
Rodriguez. It is a glabrous annual, with tbin toothed ovate or lanceo- 
late leaves, few minute flowers in short-peduncled axillary clusters, 
acuminate sepals, and acute conical inflated membranous glabrous 
capsules, with deltoid valves with a tooth on each side at the base. 
6. WALTHERIA, Linn. 
Calyx cup-shaped, with 5 lanceolate teeth. Petals 5, oblong-spathu- 
late, deciduous. Stamens 5, opposite to the petals, united at the base ; 
staminodes 0. Ovary sessile, 1-celled ; ovules 2 ; style eccentric. Capsule 
1-seeded, 2-valve d. Pilose herbs or shrubs, with dense clusters 
of small flowers in the axils of the leaves. Distrib. Species 16, mostly 
tropical America. 
1. W. indica, Linn. ; DC. Prod . i. 493. A villose shrubby branched 
perennial. Leaves short-petioled, soft, ovate or oblong, toothed, obtuse 
or acute, 1-3 inches long, plicate. Plowers in dense axillary fascicles ; 
bracts abundant, minute, lanceolate, villose. Calyx -jL inch long, densely 
villose. Petals yellow, twice as long as the sepals. Jacq. 1c. t. 130. 
W. americana, Linn. 
Mauritius, in. the plains about Beduit, Pamplemousses, etc. Seychelles, com- 
mon on St. Anne and lie aux Cerfs, but not in the larger islands, Horne , 420 ! Every- 
where in the Tropics. Guimauve. 
Three species of Ruizia are mentioned in Bojer’s Catalogue, but he had not seen 
Mauritian specimens. We have the genus at Kew from Bourbon only, and 
Cavanilles expressly restricts it to that island. The genus is like Bombeya in habit 
and flower, but all the stamens bear anthers. 
Cheirolsena linearis, Benth. Gen. Plant. 222. There is a specimen labelled 
as Mauritian in the Kew herbarium, but as the plant has been refound lately in 
Madagascar by Gerrard, there is probably a mistake in the first record. It is a 
branched, erect, slender, shrubby perennial, 1-2 feet high, with alternate entire 
firm sessile linear 1 -nerved leaves 2-3 inches long, clothed on both sides, like the 
branches and sepals with pale scurfy pubescence ; flowers 1-3 on ascending 
pedicels from the axils of the upper leaves ; 3 persistent small palmate bracteoles ; 5 
lanceolate sepals | inch long ; obovate reddish petals rather longer than the sepals, 
and stamens and pistil like those of Trochetia triflora. 
Order XVII. TILLAGES. 
Plowers regular, hermaphrodite. Sepals 4-5, valvate in aestivation, 
free or joined at the base. Petals 4-5, hypogynous, imbricated. 
Stamens indefinite, hypogynous ; filaments free, filiform ; anthers 2- 
celled ; staminodes 0. Ovary sessile, 2-5-celled ; ovules 1 or many, 
axile ; style filiform, usually cleft at the tip into as many stigmas as 
there are cells in the ovary. Pruit 2- or many-celled, dry or drupa- 
ceous. Seeds albuminous. — Usually trees or shrubs, with alternate 
stipulate leaves ; flowers axillary or terminal, small, often cymose. 
Distrib. Species 300-350. ‘Cosmopolitan, mostly tropical. 
Pilose herbs or under shrubs with entire petals. 
Fruit a naked cylindrical-trigonous pod * Corchorus. 
Fruit a globose prickly capsule 1 . Triumfetta. 
Glabrous trees with fringed petals 2. Eljeoarpus. 
