Rhagodia (ragodia)

[NL. (R. Brown, 1810), named from the resemblance of the clus tered fruit to grapes; Rhagodia Chenopod i aceæ and tribe Chenopodieæ, characterized by glomerate flowers, a horizontal seed, and fleshy fruit crowning the persistent five-lobed calyx. The 13 species are all Australian. They are shrubs or rarely herbs, either slender or robust, mealy or minutely woolly, bearing chiefly alternate leaves and small greenish flowers which are spiked or panicled, and are followed by globose or flattened berries, often red. General names for the species are red berry and sea berry . R. Billardieri is a sea-side shrub with somewhat fleshy shoots and leaves, straggling or 5 or 6 feet high, of some use in binding sands. R. hastata is the saloop-bush, an undershrub with small soft leaves, introduced at Hong-Kong and elsewhere as food for cattle. rhagon (rag'on), n. [NL., prosopyle ), with conversion of the flagellated into pavement epithelium except in the chambers. The rhagon occurs as a stage in the early development of some sponges, and others exhibit it in the adult state. The structure is named from the grapelike form of the spherical chambers. The term is correlated with ascon , leucon , and sycon . Also called dy ycus . This may be termed the aphodal or racemose type of the Rhagon system, since the chambers at the ends of the aphodi radiating from the excurrent canal look like grapes on a bunch. W. J. Sollas , Encyc. Brit., XXII. 415.