NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



BY WILLIAM TRKLEASK. 



1. PACHIRA SP. 



In the collection of house plants at the Garden occur 

 several trees about ten feet high, raised from seed obtained 

 some sixteen years ago from Haage & Schmidt as Carolinea 



These trees, with 



alba. 



o* 



lossy palmate leaves, and a 



trunk conspicuously dilated at base, are quite decorative 

 during the summer and early winter, but lose their foliage 

 toward spring, their new leaves appearing in May. Every 

 few years they flower shortly after the new leaves develop, 

 and their fruit matures almost invariably. 



The alternate leaves are dark green and glossy above, 

 paler and dull beneath, digitate, with 3 to mostly 7 ellip- 

 tical mucronate entire leaflets as much as 8 inches long with 

 narrowly margined extremely short stalks. The common 

 petiole, about as long as the leaflets, is thickened at base, 

 and, like the very thick midribs, at first sparingly stellate 

 pubescent, ultimately becoming glabrous, like the rest of 

 the leaf. 



The flowers usually open in pairs, and are solitary on 

 stout slightly scurfy peduncles less than an inch long. 

 Before expansion the buds are narrow and fusiform, recall- 

 ing somewhat a very stout Catalpa capsule. They open at 

 night and are fragrant, but the showy white androecium 



and 



greenish corolla fall before 



the middle of the next 



morning 



At the top of the pedicel six somewhat sunken elliptical 

 yellow glands secrete nectar freely. 



The calyx is cylindrical, about half an inch in diameter 

 and an inch long, slightly and irregularly 5-lobed at top, 



(154) 



