Page:The Journal of Indian Botany.djvu/196

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The genus Miliusa was founded by Alphonse De Candolle (in Mem. de la Soc. de Phys. et d'Hist. nat. de Geneve vol. V., 1832) on a plant collected by Leschenault de la Tour "in niontibus Cotta-lam dictis acl peninsulse indicse meridiem". Cotta-lam has been identified with Courtallam in the Tinnevelly District of the Madras Presidency (S. India).

The generic character, rendered into English, is as follows:—

Corolla gamopetalous, campanulate, three-lobed. Stamens 12? with slender elongate filaments, and very small anthers. Eeceptacle ovoid. Ovaries indefinite, 2-ovuled, the ovules superposed. Carpels free.

From the detailed description we gather further that the Miliusa was a low shrub with bifarious elliptic leaves, and solitary axillary flowers, consisting of a triad gamopetalous corolla (or three petals, about nine lines long, connate for half their length) concave or hooded at the base concealing the pedicel and the small calyx of three sepals, the petals folded internally so as to form three hairy fimbriate appendages, one opposite each of the main lobes of the corolla. The anthers, scarcely 1/20 line long, are inserted on the receptacle, supported by slender glabrous filaments, and rounded. The receptacle is very hairy. De Candolle observes "Genus ex habitu, corolla gamopetala, basi concava, et interne reduplicata, distinctissimum."

Plate No. iii accompanying the Memoir represents "Miliusa Leschenaultii, Alph. DC." which is manifestly the Miliusa indica of the text, although at the right hand upper corner a portion of a leaf (figure 8) is included which is not accounted for in the letter press, and may belong to some other plant.

From this illustration it appears that the torus in Miliusa indica consists of two portions, of which the lower, constituting about one-fifth of the whole, is glabrous, the remaining four-fifths being pilose; the stamens are inserted at the division between these two portions and the corolla, at the base of the lower (glabrous) fifth one corolline whorl is visible, the lobes of which are connate for about two-thirds of their length, and prolonged, "hooded"—or rather saccate—, at their bases, completely hiding the small sharply refracted "calyx", of which the segments are rather strongly ciliato;