Excerpt from Flora Australiensis, Vol. 5: A Description of the Plants of the Australian Territory

Flowers irregular or rarely nearly regular. Cal x persistent, more or less deeply toothed or divided into 5, rarely 4, Obes or segments. Corolla with 4 or 5, rarely more, lobes more or less 2-lipped or nearly equal, imbricate in the bud, the upper lip or lobes outside (or rarely inside Stamens usually 4, in pairs, inserted in the tube of the corolla and alternating with its lower lobes, rarely nearly equal and as many as corolla-lobes; anther-cells opening longitudinally, at first nearly paral lel, confluent at the apex, and usually when open forming a single reni form cell. Ovary free, not lobed, normally 2-celled, with 2 collateral ovules, or 2 or 3 superposed pairs Of collateral ovules in each cell, at teched to the incurved margins of a placenta projecting from the dissepi ment so as to divide each cell more or less perfectly into 2, with one of the ovules of each pair in each half-cell, or sometimes the ovary divided from the first into 2 to 4, or in extra-australian species more, cells with one ovule in each cell. Ovules pendulous, anatropous, with a superior micropyle. Style simple, undivided, or Obscurely notched at the apex. Fruit a dry or succulent drupe, the endocarp 2 to 4 or rarely more celled or l-celled by abortion, or separating into as many pyrenes. Seeds usually solitary in each cell or half-cell, very rarely 2 or 3 superposed, albuminous in the species where they have been seen ripe, but the albumen sometimes thin; embryo straight, with a superior radicle. Shrubs or rare] trees. Leaves alternate, scattered, or rarely strictly Opposite, undividred; Flowers axillary, solitary, or in clusters of 2, 3, or more. Bracts at the base of the pedicels very small or none, no bracteoles on the pedicels.

The Order is chiefly Australian, and two genera entirely so; a third extends sparingly over the Indian Archipelago, the Pacific Islands, and tropical Africa; and there is a fourth monotypic tropical American genus. The affinity of this Order with Verbenaceae is so striking that some have proposed uniting the two, but the superior radicle has, on ex. Amination, proved so constant a distinction, that I have followed Brown and others in maintaining the two as separate Orders. The three genera, very distinct as to the majority of their species, run so much into one another, through intermediate species with the characters differently combined, that it is impossible to ascribe to them any absolute limits.

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