Mr. J. Miers on the Canellacese. 343 



1. Canella. 



The plant upon which this genus was founded was first de- 

 scribed by P. Brown in his ' History of Jamaica/ During a long 

 time it was considered to belong to the same genus as Drimys 

 Winteri, a small tree growing in Tierra del Fuego, near the 

 Strait of Magellan ; for the bark of both species had for some 

 time been used in commerce, as mentioned by Clusius in 1605, 

 under the name of Cortex Winterana, and confounded with the 

 white bark Canella alba, a name afterwards given exclusively to 

 the Jamaica kind. By Linnaeus the latter was also considered 

 to be the produce of a species of Wintera {W. alba, L.). Murray, 

 in his edition of Linnseus's * Syst. Veg.,^ appears to have first 

 distinguished it generically from the Magellanic species, calling 

 it Canella alba, a name by which it has since been universally 

 known. The earliest details of its general characters were fur- 

 nished in 1788 by Swartz, in a memoir published in the first 

 volume of the Linnsean Transactions ; and in the same year, 

 Gaertner described the structure of its seed and embryo. Swartz, 

 however, was correct in stating its berry to be unilocular, and 

 from 2- to 4-seeded ; but Gaertner, generally so accurate in his 

 observations, erred by adopting the character of Linnseus, who 

 characterized it as being 3-celled, — an error which has been 

 perpetuated by most botanists to this day, notwithstanding that 

 its true structure was subsequently indicated by Cambassedes. 



Jussieu, in his ' Genera Plantarum' (in 1789), referred Canella y 

 together with Symphonia, to the simple-leaved section of the 

 Meliacea; but subsequently*, in his observations upon this 

 family (1817), he excluded it altogether from the Order, on 

 account of its seminal structure and the character of its leaves. 



Choisy (in 1823) referred the genus to the family of the Gut- 

 tifercE, because of its monadelphous stamens, which appeared to 

 him sufficient to establish a relationship with Symphonia [Moro- 

 nobea), an idea first indicated, but soon abandoned by Jussieu ; 

 and in the following year (1824) the same position was again 

 assigned to it by Choisy in DeCandolle's Prodromus (i. 563). 



By Nees and Martins (1825) it was still referred to Meliacece, 

 together with a new species from Brazil t, to which they gave 

 the name of Canella axillaris, which plant was afterwards made 

 the type of a new genus, Cinnamodendron, by Endlicher J. 



Cambassedes (in 1828) exposed the fallacy of the ground upon 

 which Canella had been placed by Choisy among Guttifera, and 

 first pointed out the real structure of the ovary in this genus §; 

 but his observations have been neglected by succeeding botanists. 



* Mem. Mus. iii. 347- t Nova Act. Acad. Cses. xii. p. 18. tab. 3, 



X Gen. Plant, p. 1029. § Mem. Mus. xvi. 395. 



