570 ORD, XXXII, Gruinales.  quassta stMARUBA. 
calyx is small, and cut into five obtuse erect segments: the 
corolla is divided into five petals, which are sessile, equal, lance- 
shaped, bent outwards, and tripple the length of the calyx, into 
which they are inserted: the nectarium is composed of ten oval 
hairy scales, inserted at the base of the filaments: the stamina are 
ten, slender, equal, about the length of the corolla, and furnished 
with long anther: the receptacle is a fleshy substance, of ah 
orbicular shape, and marked with ten furrows. The female flower 
(according to Dr. Wright, whose figure of the male plant we have 
given ) is never found at Jamaica on the same tree which produces 
the male flower; it is furnished with five roundish germina adher- 
ing together: the style is cylindrical, erect, about the length of 
the corolla, and divided at the top into five recurved persistent 
stigmata: the fruit is an oval, black, smooth, fleshy, soft pulp, or 
drupa ; the number of these drupa is five on each common recep- 
-tacle, but seldom more than two or three arrive at perfect maturity, 
when each contains an oblong pointed nut with a flattish kernel. 
It isa native of South America and the West Indies, and flowers 
in April. 
Although the medicinal bark, which the roots of this tree are 
known to furnish, was first imported into Europe in the year 1713, 
it is but a few years since the Simaruba was botanically ascertained, 
Linnezus at first supposed it to be the Pistacia foliis pinnatis 
deciduis, foliolis ovatis; but in the second edition of his Species 
- plantarum and Mat. Med. it is recorded as the Bursera gummifera, 
and both these genera are referred to the Terebinthus major of 
Sloane, or the Birch turpentine-tree of Browne. However Jacquin, 
who examined the root of the Bursura, and compared its bark with 
that of Simaruba, found it to be very different. Linnzus there- 
fore ih his observations on the Mat. Med. published in 1772, very 
properly mentions it among those plants which are not sufficiently 
determined. About this time the Simaruba tree was discovered and 
investigated at Guiana by Aublet, and at Jamaica by Dr. Wright, 
from whose specimens it evidently appears to be a Quassia, and 
