Shrubs or trees. Juice not milky. Leaves alternate, undivided, without stipules. Flowers in axillary cymes, irregular, hermaphrodite. Calyx truncate or 5-toothed. Corolla 5-lobed, slit open behind, with folded aestivation. Stamens 5, alternating with the corolla-lobes, free from the corolla. Anthers free, turned inwards. Ovary inferior, 2-celled. Ovules solitary in each cell, erect. Style simple. Stigma capitate, surrounded by a fringed cup. Fruit a drupe. Seeds with fleshy albumen; embryo straight.
Genus 1, species 2. Tropical and South Africa. They yield wood for carpenters’ work, pith used in the manufacture of paper, vegetables, and medicaments. Scaevola L.
[FAMILY 226.] COMPOSITAE
Leaves simple and exstipulate, but sometimes dissected or provided with stipule-like auricles. Flowers seated upon a dilated or elevated receptacle and arranged in sometimes spike-like or one-flowered heads which are surrounded by an involucre. Heads either containing only hermaphrodite flowers, several of which are sometimes sterile (male), or consisting of hermaphrodite or male central (disc-) flowers and female or neuter marginal (ray-) flowers, more rarely heads unisexual or reduced to a single flower. Calyx-limb (pappus) formed of sometimes connate scales or hairs, fully developed only in fruit, or wanting. Corolla of united petals, in the hermaphrodite and male flowers 3-5-lobed with valvate aestivation, regular (tube-, funnel-, or bell-shaped) or 2-lipped or 1-lipped (strap-shaped), in the female flowers sometimes wanting. Stamens as many as the corolla-lobes and alternate with them, inserted in the corolla-tube. Anthers connate, rarely free, opening inwards by
CAMPANULACEAE.
FLOW. PL. AFR.
Pl. 149.
J. Fleischmann del.
Lightfootia subulata L’Hér.