Livingstone’s expedition in 1861. The fruit is a foot or 
more in diameter, globose, and full of small elliptical nuts, 
with an eatable embryo, which are collected by the Negroes 
and ground into meal. Barter who also collected it during 
Baikie’s Niger Expedition, describes it as a tree eighty 
feet high, ranging for thirty miles up the Niger river from 
its mouth, with fruits weighing eighteen to thirty pounds, 
full of seeds the size of a haricot bean. Dr. Welwitsch pre- 
sented this interesting plant to Kew, in 1864, where it 
flowered for the first time in September of last year, and 
where it has borne the Mss. name of Ficus Welwitsch, 
Miquel. 
Descr. A free sixty to eighty feet high, everywhere 
glabrous. Branches very stout; bark brown. Leaves alternate, 
very shortly petioled, thickly coriaceous, six to fourteen inches 
long, sometimes seven to eight inches broad, oblong-ovate 
or lanceolate, rather abruptly obtusely acuminate, base acute 
or more often cordate, sometimes obliquely, shining and 
polished above, opaque beneath; nerves and costa very stout ; 
nervules strongly reticulate ; stipules one inch long, caducous. 
Flower-heads globose, shortly peduncled, two inches in dia- 
meter, all male in our plant, subtended by six to eight closely 
imbricating coriaceous orbicular green bracts ; composed of a 
mass of male flowers and stipitate bracteoles with broad 
peltate green discoid tips, all crowded in two or three series 
on a globose fleshy receptacle. Male perianth tubular, three- 
to four-cleft, lobes obtuse ciliated. Stamens three, exserted, 
filaments stout erect ; anthers shortly oblong. Female flowers 
not seen (perianth 3-leaved or 0, leaflets elongate, ciliate; 
ovary lenticular, style slender, stigmas two, subulate, hor- 
zontally spreading, papillose all over. Zvecul). Fruiting-head 
one foot and more in diameter, with three to five irregular 
series of achenes buried in the circumference, each three 
quarters of an inch long, concealed amongst the remains of the 
perianth and bracteoles. Achenes crustaceous, smooth. Seed 
pendulous, exalbuminous. Cofyledons unequal, the larger 
recurved embracing the smaller ; radicle superior.—J. D. #. 
Fig. 1, Flowering head ; 2, flower and peltate bracteoles ; 3, top of stamen 
4, section of fruiting head; 5, achenes:—all but 1 and 4 magnijied. 
