MEXICAN AND CENTRAL AMERICAN SPECIES OF SAPIUM. 1638 
identified the Jamaican Sapium with his 8. awcuparium. So it hap- 
pens that although Browne’s publication was not made with all the 
technical requirements, Sapium is generally accepted as a well-founded 
genus, and the Jamaican species, S. car/baeum of the modern botanists, 
is perhaps entitled to be considered as the typical one, unless Jacquin’s 
true S. aueuparium, from Cartagena, be taken, on the ground that 
it seems to be the first to receive a definite binomial name under the 
genus. Later, several extra- American genera—among them Triadica, 
Falconeria, and Conosapium, none of which I intend to discuss here— 
were referred to this genus as subgenera. This is the view taken by 
Doctor Pax in his treatment of Sapium in Engler and Prantl’s Pflan- 
zenfamilien.@ 
In its restricted sense (Eusapium) the genus under consideration 
includes large trees, with alternate smooth leaves usually bearing a 
pair of glands at the base of the lamina and provided with caducous 
stipules. Most species, if not all, are proterandrous, having a first 
bloom with only male flowers, while in a second flowering, directly 
following, occur both pistillate and staminate flowers. The inflores- 
cence consists of spiciform, glanduliferous, terminal or axillary 
racemes, growing either solitary or in clusters. On the androgynous 
spikes the pistillate flowers are always at the base. 
The staminate flowers are in clusters of at least three, but mostly 
more in the Central American species, each cluster under a more or 
less developed bract, with a pair of large, discoid, sessile glands. The 
calyx is irregularly indented or lobed and includes two or three 
stamens (always two in the species here described). 
The pistillate flowers are solitary under each bract, but in variable 
numbers (1-16) at the base of each spike. The calyx is usually bottle- 
shaped and more or less deeply divided. The ovary is superior, three- 
celled, with three styles, adnate at the base, or completely free. 
The fruit is a three-coccous capsule, smooth outside, dehiscent. The 
seeds are single in each cell, rather rounded or lentiform, and with a 
more or less distinct caruncle. The albumen is carnose. 
At present the genus Sapium includes about fifty-eight recognized 
species, distributed all over tropical America from Mexico to Argen- 
tina, with altitudinal ranges varying between 0 and 2,500 meters. — It 
is likely that a goodly number of other forms have hitherto escaped 
the attention of botanists. The present paper deals only with the nine 
Middle American species known to-day. 
«8°: 97. 
