OF SOME AMAZON TEEES. 13 



a tree which has spread itself abundantly in equinoctial America, 

 is either entirely unbranched, or only some of the first axils put 

 forth branches, which go on lengthening at the point like the main 

 stem, and producing flowers from every axil, till they resemble 

 long wands with a bunch of leaves and flowers at the apex. On 

 the Amazon the tree is in flower every day in the year. I know 

 not if the same thing occurs in its native country, or whether it 

 preserves there the same habit. The Jacarandas resemble the 

 Azedarach in their mode of growth ; and there is one species fre- 

 quent on the Amazon (but whose flowers I could never obtain) con- 

 spicuous for its palm-like habit, its tall unbranched stem, and crown 

 of large decompound leaves. 



In every mode of branching, the regularity of development and 

 symmetry of outline may be disturbed by the occasional extension 

 into a leafy branch of what should normally be a floriferous 

 peduncle, and by the springing of branches from old leaf-axils or 

 (more rarely) from any part of the surface of the stem. 



It is unnecessary to call attention to the fact that, where plants 

 are similar in other points of their structure, some correspondence 

 in their mode of branching will be found to exist, and that the 

 differences, where there are any, have ascertainable limits in every 

 genus and order. 



In trees, the connexion between the mode of branching and the 

 nature of the inflorescence is generally traceable ; while in many 

 herbaceous plants the peculiar mode of branching of the species is 

 to be observed only in the inflorescence. Even in some arbores- 

 cent plants the branching is obvious only in the peduncles, as in 

 the palmiform trees above-described, in the curious Loganiaceous 

 genus Potalia, and especially in a Simarubea (PI. Am. 3888) from 

 Maynas, with simple proliferous stems and immense terminal 

 corymbs 4 feet across. 



The branching of a peduncle may be considered in the same way, 

 and reduced to the same laws, as the branching of a tree. The 

 whole life of what might have been a large compound branch, with 

 a secular duration, is contracted into the narrow dimensions and 

 brief period requisite for perfecting the fruit, which renews the 

 existence of the branch and of the species in distinct individuals. 

 What are called centripetal inflorescences are contracted excurrent 

 axes, as centrifugal inflorescences are contracted deliquescent axes. 

 That flower always opens earliest whose pedicel is first developed 

 or is placed lowest down the axis : so, if the flowers nearest the 

 axis are the latest to open, it is because they are the youngest, and 



