water- HORTUS JAMAICENSIS. 271 



Gen. chah. Calyx an inferior perianth, four, five, or six, leaved, large, coloured 

 above, permanent ; corolla numerous petals, placed on the side of the germ, in 

 more than one row ; stamens numerous filaments, flat, curved, blunt, short; an- 

 thers oblong, fastened to the margin of the filaments ; the pistil has a germ large, 

 ovate, no style ; stigma orbiculate, flat, peltate sessile, rayed, crenate at the edge, 

 permanent ; the pericarp a hard, ovate, flesh}-, rude, berry, narrowed at the neck, 

 crowned at the top, many-celled, full of pulp. Three species are natives of Ja- 

 maica. 



1. LOTUS. 

 Nymphtea Indica ftore candido folio in ambitu scrrato. Sloane, v. i, 

 p. 252. Fpliis amplioribus prqj'itnde crenatis, sublus areolatis 

 Browne, p. 243, N. 1. 

 Leaves cordate toorhed. 



Root tuberous ; leaves alternate, on long petioles half sheathing below, floating ; pe- 

 duncles long, naked like scapes, one flowered ; flowers large, emerging. This plant 

 is very common in the ponds, lagoons, and rivers, about the Ferry, and is the same as 

 the East India plant, of the seeds of which Herodotus relates that the Egyptians made 

 bread ; by grinding and drying them in the sun. The flowers arc large and beautiful, 

 sustained each by a simple long cylindric footstalk. All parts of the plant may be 

 used for the same purposes for which the common water lilly is recommended ; for they 

 areexcellent coolers ; and useful in inflammations, burnings, orulcers, as outward appli- 

 cations ; internally, in diarrhoeas; gonorrhoeas, and dysenteries. The plants of this ge- 

 nus put on very different appearances,, the following characters are taken from a plant 

 of this species : 



Perianth four ovate leaves , corolla twenty -four petals of a lanceolate form, placed 

 upon the sides of the germs in six rows or series, one above another, by fours at equi- 

 distant spaces, in a vetticillate order, gradually decreasing inside upwards, the upper 

 rows placed cross- wise or opposite to the inter-spaces of that immediately beneath it. 

 The germ large and sub-globose ; no style ; stigmata twenty- five, sessile, linear, and 

 forming a radiate slijeld, crenated on its edge or margin; from each crena arises a_ 

 short compressed uncurvated filament with a clavated summit, the stamens were eighty- 

 two, of aflatted linear form, and unequal ; the exterior ones being the largest, equalling 

 the length of the uppermost row of petals ; they were placed in a furrow formed be- 

 tween the uppermost row of petals and the margins of the stigmas. The fruit was a 

 lar^e globose capsule, univalvular, divided into as many cells as it had stigmas, replete 

 with small ovate red seeds. 



2. ALBA. WHITE. 



Nymph<ea alba major. Sloane, v. 1, p. 252. 

 Leaves cordate, quite entire, lobes imbricate, rounded ; calyx four-leaved. 

 This species grows very commonly in Jamaica in ditches and ponds ; the corolla has 

 six or eight petals ; the stamens are linear ; one which had thirteen stigmas had fifty 

 stamens ; and one that had seventeen stigmas had seventy-three stamens ; placed in 

 rows upon the germ, surrounding the stigmas ; the exterior ones, which are also the 

 longest, arise farther from the stigmas, the other rows decrease in length as they ascend, 

 so that the uppermost row, with respect to its origin, is by much the shortest ; the an- 

 thers are sagittated and line as it were the inside of the upper and narrowest part of 



the 



