Dicotyledons with Incomplete Flowers . 
87 
Natural Order 
THYMELACEiE Tab. 71. 
Diagnosis.— Usually shrubs, with tenacious bark and alternate exstipulate 
leaves. Flowers hermaphrodite. Perianth regular, gamophyllous. Stamens 
perigynous, definite. Ovary superior, 1-celled, with a solitary pendulous 
ovule. 
Distribution. —A considerable Natural Order, widely dispersed, but most numerous in peculiar 
forms at the Cape of Good Hope and in Australia. 
One British Genus; Species, 2. 
STAMENS usually as many or twice as many as perianth-lobes. 
Seed solitary, pendulous, exalbuminous. 
• 
USES, &c.—The tenacity of the inner layer of the bark (liber), characterising nearly all of the species of the 
Order, is turned to account in species of Daphne and Edgeworthia in the Himalaya and Eastern Asia, where it is 
used in paper-making. In the Lace-bark of the West Indies (Lagetta), the liber is separable into lace-like layers 
used in fabricating ornamental articles. The seeds of Daphne are acrid and often poisonous, as in Mezereon ( Daphne 
Mezereum), a species with precocious purple or white flowers and scarlet berries common in gardens. Other Daphnes, 
as D. Gneorum and D. Pontica , and, in greenhouses, several Australian species of Pimelea, are frequently cultivated. 
