Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/507

 Rh from the 20th Class, seem to me perfectly intelligible as simple monoecious flowers, the barren one, with many stamens, being superior or interior with respect to the fertile, like the generality of monoecious as well as all compound flowers, and not inferior, or, as in every simple one, exterior.

8. Monadelphia. The Fir, Pinus, so magnificently illustrated by Mr. Lambert, is very distinct in its two kinds of flowers. Each barren one consists of a naked tuft of monadelphous stamens, accompanied only by a few bracteas at the base. The fertile ones are catkins, with similar braeteas, each scale bearing on its upper side a pair of winged seeds, and on its under a leaf-like style and acute stigma; as Jussieu first, rightly I believe, suggested, though some botanists have understood these parts otherwise. Acalypha, Croton, Jatropha, Ricinus, and several others of the natural order of Euphorbiæ, acrid milky plants, form a conspicuous and legitimate part of Monoecia Monadelphia. Omphalea is