1*8 HORTUS JAMAICENSIS. sounder 



is often used as an embrocation for the removal of rheumatic pains ; if thus bruised and 

 steeped in water, for poultry to drink, they are said to prevent them from having the yaws. 

 In Lewis's Materia Medica, it is said, " that this fruit is a medicine of singular and spe- 

 cific virtue in chlorosis, and that a tincture or extract is preferable to the berry in sub- 

 stance, whence it may be presumed, that the soapy matter is dissoluble in spirit. Its. 

 medicinal virtues were first published bv M'arloe, in a letter to Mr. Boyle." 



They are so called because thecistus or skins that inclose these berries lather in water^ 

 a. : scour like soap. When the hollow cistus or membrane is taken away, there ap- 

 pears a round, smooth, black berry, of which formerly they made buttons in England. 

 This tree very much resembles the common English ashen-tree in bigness, colour of 

 bark, and shape of the leaf ; but much differing in the fruit, which is a black round 

 berry, of the rigness of a marble, contained in a skin looking and feeling like a dried 

 bladder, very tough, and- which doth not stick close to the berry, but seems to have fc" 

 space or hollowness all round, which is so tough that you can hardly with your fingers 

 separate one from the ether. These skins, soaked in water, and rubbed with your- 

 hands, will lather and wash, or scour, as well as any soap, and have no smell. The 

 mood is no lasting timber. I have been told, that the ashes of this tree will spoil a- 

 great quantity of other ashes for scouring or making potash; which seems strange,.. 

 tlu re being such a soapy or scouring quality in the fruit of it. Barnam, p. \~i. 



The sapindus edulis, or Litchi Plurri w;is introduced into Jamaica in,177-i. 



HtX LlLVA TltEE. 



No English Ndmej SOLAXDRA, 



Cl. 5. or. 1. Pentandria monojfynia. Nat. or. 



This was so named in honour of D. C- Solander, a Swede, and disciple of Linnet^ 

 who accompauyed Sir Joseph Banks round the world. 



Gen. char. Calyx a one- leafed perianth, large, angular, permanent, three or five- 

 cleft.; segments lanceolate, erect: corolla one-petalud, funiiel-Ioi.n, very large, 

 tube bell-shaped, ventneose, a Ut tie shorter than the calyx ; border rive-clertj 

 segments -roundish, waved, patulous: stamens five filiform ri. anient*, length of 

 the tube, ascending at the top ; anthers oblong, versatile: the pistil has a supe- 

 rior oval germ, a fiitforni style, longer than the stamens, bent in ; stigma obtuse, 

 bifid, segments ovate; the pericarp an oval berry, conical at top, smooth, f^ur- 

 ceiled ; seeds very numerous, oblong, nestling. Tin re is only one species. 



CRANDIFLORA. GREAT-FLOW KKtD. 



This is a small tree from twelve to twenty feet high, with a branching trunk, and a 

 cloven ash-coloured bark, green within; the wood is spongy; the branches are 

 loose, bent down, divaricating, very long; the leaves are in clusters towards the ends 

 of the branchlets, obovate-oblong, acute, quite entire, smooth, thickish, and some- 

 what succulent, from three to seven inches in length, on round smooth petioles, rive 

 times- shorter than the leaves. Flowers terminating, subsessile, subsolitary, very large; 

 peduncles very short, thick, round, smooth, one-flowered; calyx from two to three 

 inches long, snb-quinquefid, as the fruit ripens bursting to the base into three or the 

 segments; tube of the corolla greenish white ; border ten times shorter than the tube^. 

 patulous, pale ilesh-coluur, somewhat irregular, veined, the opening four inches in 



character^. 



