ends of the branches. Peduncles either simple, bifid, or 
trifid ; usually the latter ; placed cross-ways (cruciate), and 
at nearly right or wide angles with the branch ; very rarely 
more than once compound : the pedicels divaricate, stout, 
round, smooth and shining, jointed at the top. Flower- 
buds inversely pear-shaped, hard, firm, purplish-red 
below, the imbricate sepals green, Sepals four, patent, 
concave, transversely oval ; permanent as a crown to the 
fruit, and then erect and connivent. Petals greenish or 
white, much larger than the sepals, round, very concave, 
erecto-patent, deciduous, with the very numerous stamens, 
which are curiously subspirally involute, as if in four sets, in 
the buds. Filaments long, (the outer ones an inch anda 
half,) white, with a very pale primrose or greenish-yellow 
tinge becoming deeper by age; the innermost gradually 
shorter ; seated on a raised, prominent, suboctagonal ring 
at the base of the sepals. Anthers very small, oblong, 
yellowish-white. Style longer than the stamens, white, 
subulate, simple, persistent. A naked, hollow, cup-shaped 
square, or four-sided space surrounds its base, within the 
raised, staminiferous ring ; but I have never seen the fila- — 
ments exposing this, as figured in the Botanical Magazine, 
unless when part of them had fallen. On the contrary, 
they quite conceal the whole centre of the flower ; incury- 
ing rather, and becoming denser towards the style. ‘They 
retain something of a spiral tendency, acquired in the 
bud, for some time after full expansion. Ovary uniformly 
two-celled, containing numerous angular, narrow-oblong 
ovules, attached by one end to a placenta, prominent into 
each cell from the central axis or dissepiment. Fruita sub- 
globose, one-celled, rather dry, smooth, drupe-like berry, 
approaching always more or less to pear-shaped ; about an 
inch in diameter, crowned by the persistent calyx, and um- 
bilicate at top ; ofa delicate pale ochre-yellow, suffused more 
or less on one side with rose colour, and with a very power- 
ful smell and taste of rose-water ; the flesh about two lines 
thick, sweet, but somewhat dry and mealy, or rather gru- 
mose. A large cavity inside of one cell, with merely traces 
of the obliterated dissepiment, containing from one to three 
large brown seeds, loose and rattling within the cavity. 
When there is only one seed, it is the size of a marble, 
subglobose, but a little flattened on one side. When there 
are two or three, they are irregularly flattened by com- 
pression, and smaller; one however being always the 
largest. 
