70 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
not coriaceous. The receptacles also are larger, with much longer peduncles, and they 
all seem to be distinctly monoclinous, with well developed and fertile ovaries. On the 
other hand, they bear a somewhat close resemblance to John Donnell Smith’s no. 2603, 
collected in Guatemala and distributed as B. alicastrum Swartz. 
EUPHORBIACEAE. 
FURTHER NOTES ON SPECIES OF SAPIUM. 
Sapium verum Hemsl. in Hook. Icon. Pl. 27: pl. 2647.1900; Engl. Pflanzenreich 
IV. 14774: 211. 1912, char. emend. Puates 42, 43, 44, B. 
A tree 20 to 30 meters high, with ascending, slightly divaricate limbs, and a rounded 
crown. Floriferous branchlets thick. 
Leaves bunched at the ends of the branchlets and rather large; petiole 2.5 to 4cm. 
long (1 to 5 cm., Hemsley), thick, hardly sulcate, provided above with two short, 
rounded glands. Leaf blades oblong or ovate-elliptic, 8 to 16 cm. long (12 to 20 cm., 
Hemsley), 3 to 5 cm. broad, more or less rounded or cuneate at base, obtuse at tip and 
provided with a slightly inflexed, cucullate-glandulose acumen; margin glandulose- 
denticulate; costa impressed above, prominent beneath; primary veins over 20, 
slender, sinuate, and anastomosed. Stipules suboval, 3 to 4 mm. long and broad, 
with a broadly scarious, more or less fimbriate margin. 
Floral spikes 14 to 15 cm. long, inserted in the axils of the upper leaves. Male 
flowers short-pedicellate, up to 15 under each bractlet, mixed with small glandulifer- 
ous scales; glands ovate, about 4 mm. long; bracts broadly triangular and subflabelli- 
form, about 2.5 mm. long and 5 mm. broad, thick at the base, witha scarious, irregularly 
sinuate-denticulate margin. Perianth campanulate, attenuate at the base, about 4 
mm. long, with rounded-sinuate lobules. Stamens half exserted, the filaments thick, 
bulging at the middle, the anthers yellow. Female flowers not known. 
Capsule subglobose, pedicellate, about 12 mm. long and 15 mm. in diameter, 
3-celled; pedicels slender, about 4mm. long, crowned by the persistent stylar column. 
Seeds lenticular, 7 to 8 mm. long, 5 mm. thick, apiculate, verruculose, sinuate-cristate 
on the margin; ‘‘embryo central; cotyledons orbicular” (Hemsley). 
CotomBia: Departments of Tolima and Cauca, alt. 2,000 to 2,300 meters, R. B. 
White in 1890 and again in 1895, no. 9 (Hemsley, loc. cit.); Cuesta de Tocoté, Western 
Cordillera of Colombia (Cauca), alt. 1,500 meters, Pittier 716, male flowers and seeds, 
December 21, 1905 (U. S. National Herbarium, nos. 530906-7. The foregoing descrip- 
tion is mainly based on these Tocoté specimens). 
In December, 1905, after several unsuccessful attempts to find in the forests and 
on the farms of the Cauca Valley this important rubber tree, which is one of the prin- 
cipal sources of the virgin or white rubber of Colombia, the writer was directed to the 
Cuesta de Tocoté Rubber Plantation, situated in a rather wet district of the seaward 
slope of the Western Cordillera, on the road leading from Calf to Buenaventura. It 
was soon found that the plantation really consisted of two fully grown trees, said to 
be 14 years old, another tree about 4 years old and blooming for the first time, and a 
few dozen seedlings under 1 year of age. According to the owner, the tree was formerly 
plentiful in the surrounding woods, but it has been so utterly destroyed by rubber 
gatherers that not a single sapling could be found. 
The larger tree had attained almost portly dimensions, being about 18 meters high 
and 65 cm. in diameter and branching at about 2.5 meters from the ground. The 
smaller tree, of which a picture is given here (pl. 43), was 25 cm. in diameter and 
about 8 meters high. The leaves of the seedlings are twice as large as those of the 
grown trees and are generally of a deep purple color. 
The larger trees bore only young capsules, of which I obtained later some mature 
specimens, unfortunately all detached from the rachis. On the younger tree there 
