266 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



try as " tnnu," " chaperno," "male rubber-tree," or "sterile rubber-tree," 

 Previously, the same collector bad sent fruits, which, as we shall see, have 

 been described as those of C. tuna, 



A further step was taken in 1900 by the same botanist, naming and describing 

 the tunu as a distinct botanical species. The diagnosis agrees with Hooker's 

 account in stating that the fruits are almost entirely immersed, while the 

 detailed description is drawn from incomplete specimens, assembled from local- 

 ities so far apart as Belize and the Diquls Valley of southern Costa Rica. Mr. 

 Hemsley was certainly justified in trying to settle the status of the Honduras 

 tree, but the validity of a species established on these heterogeneous materials 

 is none the less doubtful. 



The characters of the twigs, leaves, and primary male inflorescences were 

 obtained from specimens collected by the writer in Costa Rica March 18, 1898, 

 along a small river east from Terraba, and from a tree readily distinguished, 

 even by the Indians, from any of the other species then included under the name 

 of Castilla clastica. Several sets of these samples were presented to Mr. Pois- 

 son, son of a well-known botanist of the Paris Museum, who in turn sent part 

 of these to the Kew Herbarium. Although most of the specimens were com- 

 plete, except for the female flowers, which were not generally in season at the 

 time of the collection, Mr. Hemsley seems to have missed the fruits, and having 

 mentioned the fact to the younger Poisson on the occasion of an interview that 

 took place at Kew. the latter offered to send him a few of them, collected by 

 himself and preserved in a formol solution. Now the present writer guided and 

 helped Poisson in every step of his investigations in Costa Rica, and he is con- 

 sequently in position to affirm that the French explorer did not see a single 

 grown Castilla tree on the Pacific slope of that country, nor did he collect any 

 specimens of " hule macho," which he improperly calls " hule machado." His 

 specimens of fruits, preserved in formalin, all proceeded from trees of Castilla 

 cotitaricana, growing at Santa Rosa, near Gnapiles, on the plains bordering the 

 Atlantic. Statements of the case published by the elder Poisson contain several 

 other errors which may well have contributed to support Mr. Hemsley's con- 

 tention that the fructiferous receptacles sent from Honduras by Mr. R. W. 

 Cater belonged to a species identical with the Costarican hule macho. 6 



"■ " Tunu " or " toonu " is the name used for the tree by the Caribs inhabiting 

 along the coast from Cape Gracias a IMos to the Mexican border ; " chaperno " is 

 a Spanish name, generally applied to certain hard-wood leguminous trees; the 

 quallficative of '"male," as used above, is simply the translation of the Spanish 

 " macho," which, applied to plants, indicates often, although not always, the 

 absence of certain useful properties found in near related species, rather 

 than any sexual peculiarity; in much the same way, it is likely, the word 

 " sterile " is used here to indicate the lack of rubber in the tree. 



'' Bull. Mus. Hist. Nat. Paris, pi. 6, p. 138. (1000.) Also Rev. Cult. Colon, pi. 

 0, p. 302. (1000.) The paper in the Revue is a reproduction of the first, which 

 was presented to the 43rd meeting of the naturalists of the Museum. March 27. 

 1900. It states that after having mentioned to Mr. Poisson the younger the 

 existence of an undescribed species of Castilla, Mr. Pittier took him to the spot 

 where the tree grows, where they collected twigs with fruits and put some in 

 the preservative fluid; first wrong statement, since the nearest known station 

 of the new species in question is a two days' march south from San Jose and 

 on the Pacific coast, while the specimens collected and preserved by Poisson 

 were collected on the Atlantic side of the country and belong to 0. costaricana, 

 a species described by Liebmann in 1 SHI . The distinctive character of the fruit 

 given in the paper by Toisson is precisely one of the specific attributes of the last 



