|From the Bullbtin op thb Tokkbv Boi asical (. li h 35: 337-345- >9o8] 



Studies of West Indian plants — I 



Natman'iel I.ori) Britton 



I. THE JAMAICAN SPECIKS OF HERNANDIA 



On March 20, 1908, while exploring a wooded hill near Dol- 

 phin Head Mountain, parish of Hanover, in the western part of 

 Jamaica, in company with Mr. William Harris, we observed large 

 trees which were unknown to us from the character of their trunks, 

 and too high to enable us to determine the character of their foli- 

 age without a pair of field glasses, which we did not have along that 

 day. While sitting at lunch in a relatively open place in the for- 

 est, we observed the top of one of these trees, some 30 meters 

 high and at least a meter in diameter, against the sky line, and 

 saw that it was covered with round fruits, some of which we found 

 on the ground under this tree, and realized that we had found a 

 very interesting species. Our negro guide felled a somewhat 

 smaller tree with his machete, and thus enabled us to obtain ex- 

 cellent fruiting herbarium and museum specimens of the Jamaican 

 species of Hcrnandia. 



Up to this time the tree does not appear to have been definitely 

 known to botanists in the island of Jamaica. Patrick Browne 

 (Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, 373, 1756), admits the 

 genus and remarks : " This tree is pretty common in Barbadoes 

 and Mountserat, and grows to a considerable size in those islands ; 

 but I have not seen any in Jamaica, though I have been credibly 

 informed that it was frequent in the parish of Portland. The cups 

 that sustain and partly invelop the nuts are very large, and, as 

 they move in the wind, keep a whistling noise, which is often 

 frightful to unwary travellers. The seeds are very oily." Browne 

 cites Jack-in-a-Box as a common name. 



In Flora of the British West Indian Islands, page 285, pub- 

 lished in i860, Grisebach does not attribute the tree to Jamaica at 

 all, thus indicating that no specimens of it were extant at that 

 time, but Meissner, in DeCandolle's Prodromus (15' : 263. 1864), 



337 



