LXV. RUBIACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and opposite simple entire leaves turning black in drying, with stipules. Flowers regular, perfect; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, its limb 4 or 5-lobed or toothed; corolla 4 or 5-lobed; stamens inserted on the tube of the corolla, as many as and alternate with its lobes; filaments free, or united at base; anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; disk epigynous, annular; ovary inferior; style slender; ovules numerous, or 1 in each cell; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit capsular, akene-like, or drupaceous. Seeds with albumen; seed-coat membranaceous.
The Madder family with some three hundred and fifty genera is chiefly tropical, with a few herbaceous genera confined exclusively to temperate regions. To this family belong the Coffee, the Cinchonas, South American trees yielding quinine from their bark, and the plant which produces ipecacuanha, a species of Cephaelis and a native of Brazil, the Gardenia and other plants cultivated for their fragrant flowers.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT GENERA OF THE UNITED STATES.
Fruit a capsule; seeds numerous, surrounded by a wing; parts of the flower in 5’s. Calyx 5-lobed, the lobes unequal, sometimes developing into rose-colored leaf-like bodies; filaments free; wing of the seed broad, oblong-ovate, unsymmetric on the sides; leaves deciduous.1. [Pinckneya.] Calyx 5-toothed; filaments united into a short tube; wing of the seed narrow, symmetric; leaves persistent.2. [Exostema.] Fruit akene-like, 1 or 2-seeded; parts of the flower in 4’s or rarely in 5’s, flowers in pedunculate globose heads; leaves deciduous.3. [Cephalanthus.] Fruit drupaceous, with a 4-celled stone; parts of the flower in 4’s; leaves persistent.4. [Guettarda.]