46 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
Up to the present no representatives of the two sections just named 
have been reported from Central America or the West Indies. The 
westernmost species of the section Paniculati was collected in Santa 
Marta (Colombia) by Herbert H. Smith; it is described in this paper 
under the name of L. sanctae-marthae. The Fasciculati, well repre- 
sented in Brazil, reach westward to Venezuela, but the section 
Laxiflori is entirely Brazilian. 
Thus the great majority of the Brazilian species belong to sections 
not represented in Middle America, while the Lonchocarpus flora of 
the latter area is made up exclusively of representatives of Neuro- 
scapha and Eulonchocarpus, which have only a small representation 
in South America. . 
Of the 40 species included in the analytical key, only 4 extend 
beyond the limits of Middle America. They are Lonchocarpus velu- 
tinus, originally described from Panama, but apparently common in 
Santa Marta (Colombia) and undoubtedly in the foothills of the 
intervening region; JL. latifolius, reported from Colombia and Surinam, 
and especially common all over the West Indies; L. atropurpureus, an 
exclusively continental species like L. velutionus, specimens of which 
have been collected all over the northern parts of South America 
from Ecuador to Venezuela, in the lower mountain belt; and finally 
L. sericeus, already cited as extending to western Africa, and dis- 
tributed in America from Mexico to Brazil and in the West Indies. 
DISTRIBUTION IN MIDDLE AMERICA. 
Most of the Middle American species have only a limited (areal) 
range, only four species, as shown above, extending beyond the limits 
of that region of the Western Continent. Here, the northernmost 
limit of the whole genus is about 21° 30’ north latitude and it is 
reached, so far as is known, only by one species, L. megalanthus. 
In Mexico a few species reach the central xerophytic plateau or 
its borders, Thus oazacensis and unifoliolatus probably reach the 
former in the States of Oaxaca and Puebla, while rugosus, jaliscensis, 
caudatus, and emarginatus are found in the mountains which fringe 
the plateau on its southwest side and can be considered also as belong- 
ing to the tropical province of Middle America. The xerophytic dis- 
tricts in central Guatemala and the interior valleys of Costa Rica, 
considered by Engler and his followers as parts of the Andine floral 
system, have not so far furnished any contribution to Lonchocarpus, 
but in Yucatan we find at least three species, rugosus, longistylus, and 
yucatanensis, the first with a wider dispersion, the two latter ap- 
parently locally endemic. 
The neotropical floral province, including both coasts of Middle Amer- 
ica from about the twenty-first degree of northern latitude southward, 
and including almost the whole territory of Panama, claims four-fifths, 
or 32, of the reported species of the genus. Of these, 22 belong exclu- 
