QUASSIA EXCELSA. ORD. XXXII. Gruinales. 61 
The Quassia excelsa is a very large and lofty tree, frequently rising to the 
height of 100 or more feet, and measuring from eight to ten feet in circum- 
ference: the trunk is straight, tapering, and sends off many branches 
towards the top; both trunk and branches are covered with a smooth, ash- 
coloured, or grey ark ; the wood is of a pale yellowish colour, tough, but 
not very hard, and takes a good polish: the /eaves are pinnated, composed 
of from four to eight pair of pinnz, with a terminal one; the pinne aré 
nearly opposite, elliptical, pointed, firm, entire, smooth, from two to four or 
five inches in length, and standing on short footstalks: the ribs are of a 
reddish colour, and the young leaves are covered with a fine brownish down. 
The flowers are produced in clusters, or panicles, from the lower part of the 
last shoot before the leaves. The male and hermaphrodite flowers are in the 
same cluster: the male flowers are similar to the hermaphrodite, excepting 
that they have the rudiments only of a style, and no stigmas: the calyx is 
very small, and consists of five, equal, ovate, pointed, segments; the corolla 
of five, small, equal, lanceolate, yellowish-green petals: the jilaments are 
mostly five (sometimes four to six) -a little longer than the petals, downy, 
and supporting roundish anthers: the germen is ovate, bearing a slender 
style, with a trifid stigma: the fruit is a small, round, smooth drupe, about 
the size of a pea, when ripe, of a blackish colour ; these drupes are one, two, 
or three together, attached sideways to a round, fleshy receptacle. It 
flowers in October and November, and the fruit is ripe in December. Fig. 
(a) represents the ripe fruit ; (6) a male flower; (c) an hermaphrodite flower ; 
(d) a stamen—(these three last somewhat magnified ;) (e) a transverse section 
of the fruit. 
This lofty species of Quassia is a native of Jamaica and the Caribbean 
Islands. Dr. Wight, in his account of the medicinal plants growing in 
Jamaica, notices this species of Quassia under the title of Picrania amara : 
it is also mentioned by Mr. Brown and Dr. Patrick Brown, in their histories 
of Jamaica, by the names Xylopicrum, Xylopia glabra, bitter-wood or bitter- 
ash. But we are indebted to Mr. John Lindsay, Surgeon, of Jamaica, for 
an accurate account of this tree, which he published, accompanied with a 
figure, in the third volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of 
Edinburgh. : 
Sensible Qualities and Chemical Properties, &c. The wood comes to us in 
billets of various sizes, which are reduced to chips or shavings by the 
