AND SOME ALLIED PLANTS. 911 
Sc. Nat. вет. 3, viii. 136, t. 5. fig. 142-148; Ramon de la Sagra, Flora cubensis, iii. 
р. 228; Collins, Report on Caoutchoucs of Commerce (1872), ү. 11, t. 2; Hemsley, 
Biol. Centr.-Amer. (Botany), ii. p. 149; Morris, Colony of British Honduras 
(1883), p. 75, сит іс. xyl.—O. costa-rieensis, Liebman, К. Dansk. Vidensk. Selsk. 
Skrift. ser. 5, p. 319; Mexicos og Central Americas Neldeaglige Planter (1851), 
рр. 34, 35; Hemsley. l. с. (Plate XXVIII. figs. 1-3.) 
Hab. MEXICO, from lat. 21° southwards; GUATEMALA ; HONDURAS; SAN SALVADOR; 
Costa-Rica and NICARAGUA, in low forests. 
A lofty deciduous tree with milky juice; trunk 8-12 ft. in circumference; bark 
smooth, soft; branchlets very stout, with large pith and brown bark, extremities densely 
clothed with long fulvous hairs. eaves 12-18 by 4-7 in., alternate and bifarious, 
firmly membranous, broadly oblong or obovate-oblong, abruptly acuminate, base 
cordate, entire or obscurely toothed at the tip, margin with minute tufts of hairs, 
scabrid above, beneath densely clothed with tawny hairs, midrib prominent beneath; 
nerves 17-21 pairs; petiole 3-І in., stout; stipules 2-3 in., clothed with tawny hairs, 
deciduous. Flowers moncecious, contained in solitary, axillary, turbinate, fleshy recep- 
tacles 3-1 in. in diam., clothed outwardly with minute, densely imbricate, triangular, 
appressed, puberulous bracts. Staminate receptacles 2-11 in. т diam., shortly stalked, 
usually subeompressed, cup-shaped at the top, and covered densely with stamens mixed 
with bracteoles which do not overtop the margins of the cup. Pistillate receptacles similar, 
but rather smaller, and subsessile; flowers confluent; perianth fleshy, greenish, limb 
minutely 3—4-toothed ; ovary immersed in the disk; styles 2, rarely 8. Fruiting recep- 
tacle (in Honduras specimens) 14-2 in. in diam.; тіре carpels coriaceously fleshy, with 
pyramidal free pubescent crowns $ in. high ; crown 3-4-grooved laterally, with rounded 
angles and obtuse depressed 4-lobed tips. Seeds 1-4 in. in diam.; more or less 
immersed in the free crown of the carpel; testa white, papery when dry; cotyledons 
thick, plano-convex, radicle minute, superior. 
The character by which I identify this with the plant of Cervantes is that of the free 
part of the ripe carpels, which that author describes as “apice excavato ;” in all the 
other forms noticed below these crowns are acutely 3-4-angled with acute tips. The 
reduced figure of the fruit given by Cervantes shows the character of the grooved sides 
and rounded angles of the carpels, but not their indented tips. 
Trécul gives Cuba as a native country for C. elastica, on Ramon de la Sagra's 
authority, but a reference to the latter author’s ‘ Flora Cubensis’ shows that it is known 
in that island only in the Botanical Gardens of Havana. 
II. The Caucho, or Darien plant. Leaves less thickly tomentose beneath. Fruiting 
receptacles 2-3 in. in diam. ; crowns of the ripe carpels prominent, pyramidal, acute, 
acutely 3-4-angled. Seed $ in. in diam., more or less immersed in the free crown - 
of the carpel.—Darien on the Chagres and Gatun Rivers.— C. Markhamiana, Mark- 
ham (not of Collins), Peruvian Bark (1880), p. 453%. (Plate XXVII. figs. 1-17.) 
+ C. Markhamiana, Collins, * Report on the Caoutchouc of Commerce,’ р. 12, t. 3, is no doubt correctly referred 
by Bentham, Gen. Pl. iii. p. 372, to Perebea. 
2K 2 
