20) SOUTH AMERICAN BOTANY. 
nerves, are remarkably tortuous, and are quite veinless, or, at 
least, the veins are so deeply immersed as not to be visible. The 
leaves of the younger axils, at the period of flowering, are scarcely _ 
longer than six lines, and the flowers do not exceed three lines in 
length. The fruit, which is rarely free, is quite turbinate, with a 
thin fleshy pericarp, investing a hard bony nut of similar form, four 
lines long, depressed and disciform at the summit, the angles 
being terminated by sharp spines, of which three are erect, and 
nearly as long as the body of the fruit: this encloses a small oval 
carcerule, or indehiscent, two-celled, chartaceous capsule; the 
single suspended seed which fills each cell, is two lines long, and 
is very slightly incurved, tapering to the summit. The most 
remarkable anomaly attached to this plant, is the spiny intumes- 
cence of the axils : this is nearly a constant character, and is only 
wanting in the few instances where the short peduncle of the 
flowers and fruit remain perfect and free; in most cases, owing 
probably to the operation of insects, the two nuts formed at each 
node, become deformed and absorbed into the axil, which, in con- 
sequence, swells, and forms a many-spined, salient, knotty, and 
prickly joint. On opening these, I have always found the grub 
of an insect, which has generally destroyed one of the seeds. This 
character is not singular, for Chamisso and Schlechtendahl de- 
scribe a plant from Mexico (Gongylocarpus rubricaulis, Linn. 
5.558), belonging to the Ozagracez, where the drupaceous fruit 
in like manner, and probably from a similar cause, becomes con- 
crete with each axil, which hence assumes a swollen and deformed 
appearance.* Bec 
2. Sclerophylax Arnoffii : nana, prostrata, ramulis paucis 
brevibus: foliis spathulatis, sub-3-lobatis, lobis lateralibus rotun- _ 
datis, subdeltoideis, apice obtusiusculis, mucronulatis, fere eveniis, 
margine membranaceis, basi in petiolum longum linearem attenu- 
atis: flonbus parvis, calycis lobis inæqualiter foliaceis, in fructu. 
EA nervis 3 parallelis retrorsum anastomosantibus : 
* A figure of this plant, with full generic details, vil be given in the stations xd 
Se CUR í : 
