Page:Illustrations of Indian Botany, Vol. 1.djvu/184

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 * 1. Flowering branch of Berria Ammonilla—natural size.
 * 2. A flower closed showing the relative size of the sepals and petals, and that the former are partly united at the base.
 * 3. The same forcibly expanded.
 * 4. Ovary and sepals partially removed, showing the relative situation of all the parts of the flower.
 * 5. An anther.
 * 6. The ovary cut vertically, showing ovules pendulous in the cells.
 * 7. The same cut transversely.
 * 8. A full grown fruit.
 * 9. The same cut transversely, showing by the presence of the full number of wings, that in this instance, one of the cells of the ovary has aborted in the course of its progress towards maturity.
 * 10. One of the valves of the capsule removed, showing by the partition in the centre between the seeds, that the dehiscence is loculicidal.
 * 11. A seed.
 * 12. The same cut vertically.

 

A small order of plants and principally of Indian origin, 10 out of about 20 described species, being natives of this country. The species are either handsome trees, or shrubs, with alternate, stipulate leaves, the stipules usually early deciduous, racemose flowers, and divided fimbriated petals.

Sepals 4 or & without an involucrum, the cestivation valvate. Petals 4 or 5 hypogynous, rarely wanting, lobed or fringed at the point, cestivation imperfectly imbricated or sometimes valvate. Disk glandular, somewhat projecting. Stamens hypogynous or rarely perigynous, some multiple of the sepals, (8—80) filaments short, distinct, or slightly united at the base, anthers long, opening at the apex by a double pore. Ovary with two or more cells : style solitary, simple, or sometimes trifid, rarely several : stigmas either free, equalling the cells of the ovary, or united. Fruit variable, indehiscent, dry, drupacious, or valvular and loculicidal; sometimes by abortion 1-celled. Seeds one or two in each cell. Albumen fleshy. Embryo inverted. Cotyledons flat, foliaceous, radicle superior.

As this order only differs from Tiliaceae in its fringed petals, and the elongated anthers opening at the apex by pores, in place of the cells splitting their whole length, it is of course more nearly allied to that order than any other, and has been, apparently not unjustly, referred to it by Kunth, no mean authority, whose opinion has been adopted by Bartling. Such being the case, whatever may be the affinities of the one order are equally those of the other, and therefore, I refer to Tiliaceae for any further information that may be wanted on this head.

India and her islands seem to be the head quarters of this order, the species of which we find very generally distributed over the sub-alpine regions of the country, though not confined to them. Dr. Wallich in his list of Indian plants enumerates no fewer than 28 species, not however all continental. Dr. Roxburgh gives descriptions of 9 species, and Blume in his flora of Java of 11. These last however are not all distinct from those named by Wallich. Only five or six species have yet, so far as I am aware, been found in the Peninsula and Ceylon. In addition to these Indian ones, a few are found in Australia and South America, whence it would appear, that in proportion to the number of species, few orders are spread over a more extensive surface than the Elceocarpeae.

Respecting these, if they possess any, little is known, Dr. Horsfield mentions that the bark of one species is very bitter, and is used in Java as an anthelminthic. The olive-like fruit of ''El. serratus'' is dried by the natives and used in curries, and also pickled, Dr. Roxburgh tried in vain to extract oil from the seeds. The nuts of Monocera, as well as those of some of the Elaeocarpi, are polished and set in gold as beads ; in which state they are esteemed sacred by some casts of the Hindoos. They are of a dark brown colour, very hard, tuberculated on the surface, and are readily known by their splitting into two or three pieces, the number of carpels namely, that unite to form the perfect fruit. 