New SPECIES OF SOUTH AMERICAN PLANTS 49 
Spikes 3 to 3.5 cm. long, the lower portion, sometimes half of 
the length, bearing several pistillate bracts, the upper staminate 
portion about 3 mm. thick, densely flowered. 
Staminate Flowers.—Pedicels filiform, nearly or quite as 
long as the flower, which is 1.5 mm. broad when fully expanded. 
Pistillate Flowers.—Bracts foliaceous, veiny, 8 mm. broad, 
3 mm. long, cordate and clasping, reniform, the margin rounded, 
crenate and long-ciliate. Ovary a little more than I mm. broad, 
and half as high depressed, lightly lobed. Styles 8 mm. long, 
very slender, distinct, sparingly branched, the branches ex- 
tremely fine. 
"A shrub to 5 or 6 feet. Occasional iu damp and shady 
ground in dry forest region below 1,500 feet. Nearly as vari- 
able as No. 1417, but always distinguished by the long ped- 
uncles (Pistillate portions of spikes.—H. H. R.). Specimen 
collected near Masinga, 400 feet, October." (Herbert H. Smith, 
Colombia, No. 429.) 
Pera benensis. 
t 
open valves are nearly one cm. long and half as broa eds 
5 or 6 mm. long, eed lightly compressed, black, strongly shin- 
ing, with a small, light-brown strophiole. 
At the Junction of the Rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, 
Bolivia, August 1886 (Rusby No. 2646). em 7 
The superficial appearance of this species is identical with 
that of P. oppositifolia, of Cuba, but the seeds are several times 
larger than those of the latter, and are characteristically distinct. 
Chaetocarpus pearcei. 
pecimen in fruit. Branchlets stout, flexuous, Mot are 
dose and corky-roughened. Petioles 6 to 8 mm. long, stout, 
