Sterculia. monadelphia dodecandria. 155 



Jungli-b?/dam, (wild almond) is the name it is kno\yn by 

 amongst the ^lussehiians on the Peninsula. 



A tali stout tree, a native of the interior parts of the Penin- 

 sula of India. In the Botanic garden it blossoms in Miirch, 

 and the seed ripens about six months afterwards. 



Trunk tall and straight. Branches verticelled, and hori- 

 zontal. Bark ash coloured, and pretty stnooth. Leaves 

 crowded about the ends of the branchlets, long-petioled, 

 digitate. Leaflets from six to twelve, lanceolar, entire, 

 smooth. They are perfectly deciduous during the cool sea- 

 son in Bengal. Stipules ensilbrm, caducous at an early 

 period. Racemes imtnediately under the young leaves of the 

 present year, horizontal, compound, about as long as the pe- 

 tioles, smooth. Floicers large, of a dull crimson and orange, 

 variously blended, most of them male-hermaphrodite. Brae- 

 tes very small. Calyx hypocrateriform, deeply five-cleft, 

 deciduous. Ser/metits lanceolate, villous on the inside. Co- 

 lumn of the fructification long, and much curved. In the 

 male-hermaphrodite its apex is more enlarged, and forms a 

 campanulate receptacle for the germ, on the margin of which 

 twelve or fifteen anthers sit, and in its bottom the five-lobed 

 abortive germ without style or stigmas. In the J'ertile her- 

 maphrodite it is more robust, with an acetabuliform apex, 

 round its margin are about the same number of anthers. 

 Germs round, very villous, five-lobed, five-celled, in each 

 about from twelve to twenty seeds, attached in two vertical 

 rows to the inner angle of the cell. Stijle curved. Stigmas 

 five-lobed. Capsules, from one to five come to niaturity, 

 singly about the size of a man's fist, broad-reniform, pretty 

 smooth, ligneous and fibrous, lined on the inside with a 

 thick parchment-like web of waved transverse fibres; one- 

 celled, one-valved. Seeds several, from ten to fifteen, of the 

 size of filberts, oblong, attached alternately to the ligneous 

 margins of the follicle, hard and smooth. Perisperm none. 

 Embryo inverse. Cotyledons conform to the seed, five nerv- 

 ed, thick and fleshy. Plumvla two lobed ; /o6e» digitate, 



