86 MB. BENTHAM ON LOGANIACEjE. 



nearly cylindrical and erect, near the base of the albumen, with a 

 straight radicle about the length of the cotyledons. Such at least 

 is the structure of the seeds in P. guianensis and coriacea, where I 

 have seen them perfectly ripe. 



The stipules of Pagamea are long, vaginate and deciduous, as 

 in Gcertnera y from which it differs as Psychotria does from Cha- 

 salia, in the shortness of the tube of the corolla. The number of 

 parts of the flower is also usually (though not always) four in 

 Pagamea, five in Gcertnera ; the inflorescence is axillary, not ter- 

 minal, as might be inferred from the expressions in the *Pro- 

 dromus.' I have at least always observed two opposite axillary 

 peduncles, which in the early stage appear to terminate the 

 branches ; but the bud between them soon grows out, leaving 

 the peduncles one on each side at the base of the young shoot, 

 instead of a single terminal peduncle in the dichotomy of two 

 young shoots. 



The whole genus has but a limited range in East tropical 

 America. The old P. Guianensis is the widest spread, extending 

 over Guiana and North Brazil ; P. capitata is confined to Guiana 

 and Surinam ; the three others have only been found by Spruce 

 on the Upper Bio Negro. 



25. G^ibtneba, Lam. 



If Pagwnea is the Loganiaceous counterpart of Psychotria, Gcert- 

 nera is, without doubt, that of Chasalia, from which genus it is 

 absolutely undistinguishable except by the ordinal character of the 

 free ovary and fruit, not always very easy to ascertain at the time 

 of flowering, when the fleshy epigynous disk of Chasalia or Psy- 

 chotria is often as large or larger than the ovary itself. The con- 

 sequence has been, that many Gcertneras have been first described 

 as Chasalias. The generic characters, originally drawn up from 

 some of the Mauritius species, have since been slightly modified 

 by Endlicher, and lastly by Blume, so as to include the Cingalese 

 ones published by Arnott under the name of Sylcesia. I have 

 nothing to add to the detailed character in Blume's 'Museum 

 Botanicum,' p. 173, nor even to remark upon, except that the 

 phrase " cotyledonibus e basi tumida subulatis " does not refer at 

 least to the G. thyrsiflora, where the cotyledons are short and 

 thick. The seeds have, however, only been examined in a very 

 few species. These are now rather numerous; for besides the 

 fourteen Mauritius species enumerated in the ' Prodromus,' one 

 has been found in West tropical Africa, five in Ceylon, of which 



