PITTIER — PLANTS FROM COLOMBIA AND CENTRAL AMERICA. 449 



Yucatan and Tabasco: Johnson. a 



Jamaica: Kingston; Donnell Smith, flowers, February 17, 1894 (U. S. National Her- 

 barium no. 409325); Devon Pen, E. Campbell, leaves only (U. S. National Herbarium 

 no. 521778); said to be introduced from Colombia or Panama. 



Porto Rico: Magueyes (Ponce), Goll 782, flowers, November 25, 1899 (U. S. Na- 

 tional Herbarium no. 409325); Ponce, Nina Prey 66, flowers and fruit, March 5, 1903 

 (U. S. National Herbarium nos. 845684-86; local name anacaguite (Nina Prey). 



Explanation of Plate 89.— Fruit with three of the carpids open showing seeds. From a photograph 

 taken in Washington of a specimen received from Panama in 1910. Natural size. 



This species is quite variable and may be subdivided into several local forms, 

 which one would be tempted to call species but for the fact that all possible inter- 

 mediary stages seem to occur. The leaves (fig. 70, a, b), very variable in size, are at 

 times only trilobate, at others divided into five lobes, the four lateral ones being of 

 the same size and independent from each other. These divisions are either obtuse 

 or acute, and the median lobe is more or less narrowed at the base. In the Santa 

 Marta specimens, which should be nearer to Cavanilles type, the tomentum of the 

 lower face of the leaf is thick and very soft to the touch, even in older leaves, and 

 this applies also to the Porto Rican and Salvadorean specimens; in all Central Amer- 

 ican specimens but the latter the villosity is much less dense, the stellate bushy 

 hairs being easily singled out under the lens. The floral racemes of the Santa Marta 

 tree bear at the same time male and hermaphrodite flowers, and the same can also be 

 said of the Puntarenas material, while in all the other specimens of the National 

 Herbarium the racemes seem to be either entirely male, the most frequent case, or 

 entirely hermaphrodite. Great variation is also observed in the pubescence of the 

 androphorum and gynophorum and staminal tube, the latter being also variously 

 shaped according to locality. Thus in H. H. Smith's samples, coming, as explained, 

 from the locality nearest to Cartagena, both the androphorum and gynophorum are 

 sparsely covered for their whole length with short, obtuse hairs, while on the staminal 

 tube the pilosity is extremely minute and can hardly be distinguished with an ordi- 

 nary lens; the staminal tube of the male flowers is scarcely broader than the andro- 

 phorum, rather elongate, and bearing less than ten stamens (fig. 72a). In all the Cen- 

 tral American samples but the one from San Salvador, the flowers of which are imma- 

 ture the androphorum and gynophorum have at the base the same short sparse hairs, 

 but their upper part, as well as the staminal tubes, is covered with glandular stiff 

 hairs such as are represented in figure 76 b; in both the male and hermaphrodite 

 flowers the staminal tube is broad and rather flat, with 12 to 14 stamens. There are 

 also sensible differences in the form and size of the ovary complex and of the stigmas, 

 so that one would easily be induced to segregate the two forms but for the fact that 

 those ostensible differential characters are found together in the Jamaican and Porto 

 Rican specimens. I am inclined, therefore, to follow Robert Brown b so far as to 

 include in one polymorphic species, 5. carthagenensis Cav., the specimens from the 

 Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Colombia, Central America, and the West Indies, 

 but excluding S. chicha St. Hil. from Brazil, which, judging by the specimen from 

 Sellow (no. 1445), differs not only by the Bhape and texture of the leaves, but 

 also by its simple floral racemes, its smaller flowers, its densely hairy androphorum 

 and gynophorum, and doubtless by other characters. 



Sterculia costaricana Pittier, sp. nov. Figures 77, 78. 



A small tree, about 5 meters high. 



Leaves simple, entire, long-petiolate, quite glabrous, crowded at the ends of the 

 branchlets; petioles 2.5 to 5 cm. long, slender, rounded, slightly thicker toward the 



a Biol. Centr. Amer. Bot. 1: 126. &Bennet, PI. Jav. 228. 1838. 



