Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/495

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GYNANDRIA.
465

columnar receptacle. The learned Schreber therefore justly removed them to the 5th Class.

But this Order may receive a reinforcement from the Linnæan Pentandria Digynia. Several of the Contortæ have long been thought to belong to Gynandria; see Pergularia, Ic. Pict. t. 16, and Andr. Repos. t. 184. In this genus, as well as Cynanchum and Asclepias, the pollen is produced in 5 pair of glutinous masses, exactly like the pollen of Orchideæ, from 6 glands inserted upon the stigma, so that no plants can be more certainly gynandrous. Some obscurity arises from each mass of pollen being received into a kind of bag or cell, formed by a peculiar valvular apparatus that encircles the organs of impregnation, and bears a great resemblance to filaments or stamens. The pollen however is, in the above genera, neither attached to, nor secreted by these cells or valves, but by the 5 glands, each of which is double or two-lobed, and all of them seated on that thick abrupt angular body which performs the functions of a stigma. Nor is