THE GENUS HOMALIUM IN AMERICA. 
By 8. F. Brake. 
INTRODUCTION. 
The genus Homalium, based on the single species H. racemosum, 
from Martinique, was established by Jacquin ' in 1760, and in 1763 a 
more extended description with a figure of the flower was given in 
his Selectarum Stirpium Americanarum Historia? In 1775 Aublet * 
described the new genus Racoubea from French Guiana, based on a 
single species, 2. guianensis, and with it the genus Napimoga,* which 
has since been considered a more or less doubtful synonym of Homa- 
lium. Jussieu,> in his Genera, referred Racoubea to Homalium as a 
synonym, a treatment which has been followed by all subsequent 
authors, and placed both Homalium and Napimoga in his group 
‘‘Genera Rosaceis affinia.”” Robert Brown * in 1818 made the genus 
Homalium the type of a new order, Homalinae, a classification retained 
by various authors down to 1857. In Bentham and Hooker's Genera 
Plantarum the genus was placed in the Samydaceae, and in the 
Natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien of Engler and Prantl in the tribe 
Homalieae of the family Flacourtiaceae. 
Only two revisionary treatments of the American species of the 
genus have been published. Bentham,’ revising the genus in 1860, 
recognized five American species, one from Mexico, one from the 
West Indies, and three from northern South America, two of which 
were described as new from Spruce’s collections. In 1871 Endlicher ° 
recognized five species from Brazil and adjacent regions, one being 
here first published. Homalium cuneifolium Willd., likewise de- 
scribed for the first time in this connection, is accredited by the 
Index Kewensis to Brazil, but the habitat is said by Endlicher to be 
unknown, and from the characters given it is clear that the plant 
belongs to the Old World group of species. Since Bentham’s and 
Endlicher’s treatments only three species have been described from 
America, one each from Oaxaca, Honduras, and Jamaica. In the 
study of the material accumulated within the last twenty years at 
the National Museum, the Gray Herbarium, and the herbarium of the 
1 Enum PI. Carib. 5. ® Gen. Pl. 343. 1789. 
2170. pl. 188, f. 72. 6 Narr. Exp. Congo App. 438. 
* Pl. Guian. 1:589. pl. 236. 7 Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot, 4:31-38. 
4 Op. cit. 592. pl. 237. 8 In Mart. Fl. Bras. 131: 505-508. pl. 101. 
221 
