Polyadelphous (many or several brotherhoods) is the term generally employed when these sets are several, or even more than two, and the particular number is left unspecified. These terms all relate to the filaments.
Syngenesious is the term to denote that stamens have their anthers united, coalescent into a ring or tube; as in Lobelia (Fig. [285]), in Violets, and in all of the great family of Compositæ.
[284.] Their Number in a flower is commonly expressed directly, but sometimes adjectively, by a series of terms which were the name of classes in the Linnæan artificial system, of which the following names, as also the preceding, are a survival:—
Monandrous, i. e. solitary-stamened, when the flower has only one stamen,
Diandrous, when it has two stamens only,
Triandrous, when it has three stamens,
Tetrandrous, when it has four stamens,
Pentandrous, when it has five stamens,
Hexandrous, when with six stamens, and so on to
Polyandrous, when it has many stamens, or more than a dozen.