X 
EDIBLE FRUITS OF THE RIO NEGRO. 183 
been produced at the ends of the strongest branches of the most luxu- 
riant plants. 
EDIBLE Fruits of the Rio Necro, South America; by 
RICHARD Spruce, Esq. 
1. Piquiá-rána, Ling. Ger.—Caryocasylabrum, Pers.—(Nat. Ord. 
Rhizobolee.) Coll. n. 1345. 
Has. Barra do Rio Negro, in the virgin forest, chiefly in moist 
situations near streams. The fruit is ripe in February. 
Tree 60-100 feet high, and proportionately thick, with smooth bark, 
and hard heavy wood. Branches and leaves opposite, the latter ternate, 
smooth ; leaflets oval, apiculate, obtuse, subentire, articulate with the 
short petiolules; a minute stipella to each lateral leaflet. Peduncles long, 
terminal, with 1—4 shortly pedicellate fruits matured on each. Fruit 
subglobose, as large as a small orange, thickly clad with brownish 
lepra; epicarp rather woody, brittle, soon falling away ; mesocarp thick, 
pulpy, yellowish; endocarp bony, thickly beset with reddish acicular 
processes, penetrating mesocarp, and persisting when the latter decays, 
so as to simulate a thorny fruit. Seed exalbuminose; embryo pure 
white, consisting almost entirely of radicle, fleshy, firm. Stigma rayed, 
in a lateral dimple of the fruit, nearer base than apex. Calyx persis- 
teut, inferior, with five rounded lobes. 
I first saw fruits of this, with the pulpy covering already fallen away, 
strewed about in the forest, and in this state reminding me of the prickly 
fruit of Datura Stramonium. I afterwards met with a tree bearing per- 
fect fruit, and not too large to be cut down, from which my specimens 
were obtained. The kernel is very good eating, tasting like that of the 
Brazil-nut, but Jess hard. y HN 
2. Umarí, Ling. Ger.—Couapia sp.?—(Nat. Ord. Chrysobalanee.) — 
Has. Barra; in sandy soil where the forest is not very dense. Fruit - 
ripe in February. ae 
Tree 45 feet by 12 inches or more, with something of the habit of 
the Sycamore. Leaves alternate, subdistichous, 9 inches by 44-5 inches, 
ovate-oblong, with an abrupt slender apiculus, naked above, beneath 
clad with minute fawn-coloured shining pubescence, veins parallel, very 
prominent beneath, margins undulate. Stipules 0, or deciduous? E 
