Herbs or succulent undershrubs with an acrid juice. Leaves alternate, oblique at the base, with large, scarious stipules. Flowers diclinous, pink-colored, cymous-

Calyx adherent, colored. Sepals of the 2 pairs, decussating; of the 5, imbricated, or 8. Stamens CO, distinct or coherent in a column. Anthers clustered.

Ovary inferior, 3-celled, with 3 largo placentae meeting in the axis. Seeds minute, without albumen. Fruit capsular. (Fig. 270.)

Genera 4, aperies 160. mostly natives of the Indies and S. America - none N. American. They arc frequently cultivated as curious and ornamental. Properties astringent and bitter.

DIPLOCLIN'IUM, Lindl. Elephant's Ears. (Gr. double,

couch; alluding to the double placentas.) Fls. Sepals orbicular, colored like the petals, but larger; petals oblong, acute; stamens combined in a column; anthers in a globous head. Sepals 3, lanceolate, larger than the 2 petals; stigma lobes distinct, spiral, erect; capsule wings unequal; placentae double, or 2 in each cell.- Evergreen, succulent undershrubs.

D. Evansianum Lindl. Glabrous; st. branched, tumid and colored at the joints, succulent; lvs. large, slightly angular, mucronate-serrate, cordate-ovate, very unequal at base, petiolate, with weak, scattered prickles, and straight, red veins, the under surface deeply reddened; fls. pink-colored in all their parts, except the golden yellow anthers and stigmas; larger than the , and on peduncles twice as long. From China. (Begonia discolor Willd.) - Many other species are found in conservatories - too many for our limits.