226 
H. F. Wernham. 
We shall deal separately with Galieae later in the present 
chapter. 
Caprifoliacece. Turning now to Caprifoliacese, we are con¬ 
fronted with a family of less than 300 species consisting almost 
entirely of trees and shrubs, confined, in marked contrast with 
Rubiacese, to temperate climates. The two families are, without 
doubt, closely allied, and no critical floral characters can be pre¬ 
scribed to distinguish one from the other. The points of difference, 
we shall find, are nevertheless of great importance, but they concern 
tendencies and not fixed characters; they have thus little value to 
the practical systematise 
Caprifoliaceae are, however, readily distinguishable from 
Rubiacese in practice by means of vegetative characters, thus:— 
stipules occur very rarely in the former family outside the genus 
Sambucus, and in Sambucus the leaves are pinnately compound; in 
those cases where stipules occur they are not “ interpetiolar.” 
The critical floral characters are precisely the same as for 
Rubiaceae, but there are important differences in those characters 
which are variable within the respective families. In the first 
place, Caprifoliacece display a marked tendency to asymmetry in 
the corolla, and this is reflected in half the total number of species 
in the family. A familiar example of this is Lonicera , as illustrated 
in the Honeysuckle, the corolla being zygomorphic in most of the 
species of this extensive genus; a sac, or incipient spur is frequently 
present at the base of the corolla. This zygomorphy is not of that 
type concerned with aggregation of flowers; nevertheless it is 
seldom accompanied by oligomery of the andrcecium ( v . supra) in 
this family. Evolutionary advance has not usually proceeded to 
the latter length, and, indeed, the lobes are sometimes only slightly 
unequal in these forms with asymmetric corollas. In Linncca 
(including Abelia ) and Dipelta, however, together comprising over 
a dozen species, the andrcecium is oligomerous, consisting of four 
didynamous stamens. 
The inflorescence, as in Rubiacese, is prevailingly umbellate or 
capitate, the tendency being to bring the flowers to one horizontal 
level, or, at any rate, to present a continuous surface to insect- 
visitors, which consequently may readily pollinate several flowers 
in a single visit. It will be convenient hereafter to refer to in¬ 
florescences which display this tendency as “ umbellifloral ” in¬ 
florescences. This tendency is no more than the concomitant of 
that general tendency to aggregation which is the mark of Umbelli- 
