safford: chelonocarpus 108 



BOTANY. — Chelo7iocarpus, a new section of the genus Annona, 

 with descriptions of Annona scleroderma and Annona tes- 

 tudinea. W. E. Safford, Bureau of Plant Industry. 



While on a mission for the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, in April, 1902, Mr. Guy N. Collins of the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry found at the railway station of Morales, not far 

 from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, a hard-shelled, globose custard- 

 apple quite distinct from all iVnnona fruits hitherto known. He 

 photographed two of the fruits, but was not able to secure flowers 

 or leaves of the trees producing them. In February of the fol- 

 lowing year specimens of the same fruit together with herbar- 

 ium specimens of the leaves were collected by Mr. Percy Wilson 

 of the New York Botanical Garden near Puerto Sierra, Honduras, 

 where the species occurred as a forest tree locally known as 

 ''Anona del monte," or wild Annona. One year later, in April, 

 1904, Mr. O. F. Cook collected fruits of a hard-shelled Annona 

 very similar to the above species but oblate in form, broadly 

 umbilicated and with the shell less regularly divided into poly- 

 gonal areoles. At the same time Mr. Cook secured herbarium 

 specimens including both leaves and flowers, the former differ- 

 ing somewhat in size and shape from those of the Honduras 

 tree, tho of the same character, and the latter resembling the 

 flowers of the section Atta, in shape, but with the receptacle 

 and consolidated gynoecium so distinct as to further set apart 

 the Guatemala species and its allies as a distinct group or section 

 of the genus Annona. For this section I propose the name Chel- 

 onocarpus, suggested by the hard tortoiseshell-like surface of the 

 fruit. On account of the complete nature of the material col- 

 lected by Mr. Cook the species collected by him is made the type 

 of the section. 



Section Chelonocarpus 



Hard-shell Custard-apple Group 



Flowers in shape resembling those of the section Atta; pedun- 

 cles clustered, usually issuing from the bark of old branches or 

 stems (caulifloral) ; calyx gamosepalous, 3-lobed; receptacle (tor- 



