544 EUPHORBIACEAE. | Homalanthus. 
4. HOMALANTHUS A. Juss. !$24. 
Glabrous shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate, petiolate, broad, 
entire, often glaucous; stipules deciduous. Flowers in terminal racemes, 
‘small, apetalous, monoecious. Male flowers: Very numerous, occupying 
all the upper portion of the raceme. Calyx of 1 or 2 minute flat appressed 
sepals. Stamens 6-50; filaments very short; anther-cells distinct, divari- 
cate, longitudinally 2-valved. Female flowers: Few or solitary at the 
base of the raceme. Oalyx 2-3-partite. Ovary 2-3-celled; styles 2-3, 
linear, entire; ovules 1 in each cell. Capsule didymous or trigonous, 
fleshy, indehiscent or splitting into 2-3 2-valved cocci. Seeds with a 
fleshy aril. 
Species 7-8, scattered through the Pacific islands, Australia, and the Malay 
Archipelago. 
1. H. polyandrus, Cheesem.—A handsome slender tree 10-25 ft. high, 
everywhere perfectly glabrous; branches brittle, terete, marked with the 
prominent scars of the fallen leaves. Leaves in young plants 3-12 in. 
diam., in old plants much smaller, 2-4 in. long, broadly triangular-ovate or 
rhomboid - orbicular, acute, membranous, somewhat undulate, glaucous 
beneath ; petiole as long or longer than the blade; stipules #in. or more. 
Racemes slender, erect, 4-8 in. long. Male flowers: Very numerous, rather 
loosely placed, ;;in. diam.; bracts minute, 1-2-glandular at the base. 
Stamens about 40, very short, closely packed in a globose head. Female 
flowers: 1 to 4 at the base of the raceme, on long slender pedicels, drooping. 
Capsule 4-2 in., trigonous, 3-celled, splitting into 3 cocci. Seed enveloped 
in a yellowish aril, frequently persistent on the axis of the fruit.—H. nutans 
Hook. f. in Journ. Linn. Soc. i (1857) 127 (not of Guill.). Carumbium 
polyandrum Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. (1864) 248; Cheesem. in Trans. N Lh. 
Inst. xx (1888) 172. 
KERMADEO Istanps: Sunday Island, plentiful in 1887, 7. F.C. ; but in 1908 reduced 
to specimens growing in localities inaccessible to goats, W. ft. B, Oliver! MAcAULAY 
Istanp: A few plants in the crater-basin (in 1887), T. F. C. Flowers most of the 
year. 
Endemic, but very closely allied to the Polynesian H. pedicellatus Benth. (Carum- 
bium nutans Muell. Arg.), principally differing in the larger number of stamens. 
Family LVIIT. CALLITRICHACEAE. 
Perfectly glabrous slender herbs, usually growing in wet places, often 
aquatic. Leaves opposite, linear or obovate-spathulate, quite entire, the 
upper ones often crowded or rosulate. Flowers monoecious, minute, axil- 
lary, solitary or rarely a male and female in the same axil, without perianth.. 
Male flowers of a single stamen subtended by two minute bracts ; filaments 
slender, elongated; anther 2-celled, cells confluent above. Female flowers 
with or without the 2 bracts. Ovary sessile or shortly stalked, 4-celled ; 
ovules solitary in each cell; styles 2, elongated, stigmatic throughout their 
length. Fruit flattened, indehiscent, 4-lobed and 4-celled, ultimately sepa- 
rating into 4 1-seeded carpels. Consists of the following genus. 
