. The natural history of plants. Botany. 66 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. adheres. The Coluhrinas are common to all tropical countries; they are erect or climbing shrubs, unarmed, with leaves almost constantly alternate. Cormonema, prickly trees or shrubs of Brazil, "with alternate leaves and axillary cymes, have the flower and fruit of CofoSma, from which perhaps they ought not to be generically separated. They can always be easily distinguished at the first glance by the presence of two sessile glands at the base of the foliar limb. Alphi- tonia has nearly the flowers of Colubrina, with th
. The natural history of plants. Botany. 66 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. adheres. The Coluhrinas are common to all tropical countries; they are erect or climbing shrubs, unarmed, with leaves almost constantly alternate. Cormonema, prickly trees or shrubs of Brazil, "with alternate leaves and axillary cymes, have the flower and fruit of CofoSma, from which perhaps they ought not to be generically separated. They can always be easily distinguished at the first glance by the presence of two sessile glands at the base of the foliar limb. Alphi- tonia has nearly the flowers of Colubrina, with the ovary in great part inferior and the fruit sunk to nearly the middle in the recepta- cular cup. The mesocarp sometimes remains thin and dry to the end; but it often thickens and becomes fleshy or suberose. In any case it finally separates into cocci dehiscing internally which, like those of the Emmenosperma and of some Colubrina, are basally detached from the receptacle on which the seeds remain. The latter are red and large; but, in the species producing a drupaceous fruit, they are partly enveloped in a well developed ^ril. The Alphitonias' are Oceanian, arborescent, nearly always covered with a ferruginous or whitish down, rarely glabrous; they have alternate leaves and multi- floral cymes, axillary or terminal. Berchemia, exGdi or climbing shrubs from the warm regions of Asia, Africa, and America, with the general organisation of the preceding genera and the ovary inferiorly adherent, presents however these differences. The receptacle is in form a shallow cup, or nearly plane, the margin of which bears the perianth and andrcecium. The latter are therefore sometimes nearly hypogynous. The Fig. 47. Long. sect, of flower. Fig. 46. Flower (f). disk which SUrrOUUds the base of the ovary, instead of being a thin layer covering the coats of the receptacle, rises in the form of a well or sack the upper opening of which is transversed by the style. The flowers are disposed in clus
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1871
