Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula. 129 



Penang ; Phillips, Curtis, No. 2438. Singapore ; King's Collector, 

 No. 1185. 



This species has smaller flowers, with a longer calyx, than the last : 

 its leaves are narrower, and its pubescence is cinereous not rufescent. 



20. Erythropalum, Blume. 



Climbing glabi'ous shrubs with axillary tendrils. Leaves alternate, 

 entire, 3- to 5-nerved at the base. Cymes slender, pedunculate, 

 dichotomous ; the cymules umbellate, minutely bracteolate. Flowers bi- 

 sexual. Calyx with 5 broad short teeth, imbricate in aestivation, its tube 

 adherent and much enlarged in fruit. Corolla perigynous ; petals 5, 

 short, broad, spreading, slightly coherent by their bases, inserted out- 

 side the large cupular fleshy 5-lobed disc, valvate in aestivation. Sta- 

 mens as many as the petals, opposite to them and slightly attached to 

 their bases, filaments short ; anthers broadly ovate with lateral longitu- 

 dinal dehiscence, the connective rather large. Ovary half immersed in 

 the disc, tapering to a short terminal style, 1 -celled ; ovules 1 to 3, pen- 

 dulous from the apex ; stigma minute, 3-lobed. Fruit crowned by the 

 persistent calyx-lobes and the disc, oblong, 1-celled ; the pericarp and 

 putamen thin, lined by a pulpy coat, splitting, when dry, into 3 to 5 

 vertical segments. Seed solitary, pendulous ; the embryo minute, lying 

 near the apex of the large fleshy albumen. 



To this genus there are attributed in the Flora of British India three species, 

 viz.y E. scandens, Bl. E. populifolium, and E. vagum, Mast. Each of the three ori- 

 ginally appeared in Botanical literature as the type of a distinct genus. Of these 

 three genera, Erythropalum is the oldest and is therefore now retained. It was 

 founded by Blume (Bijdr. 921) in 1826, and was by him referred to the Natural 

 order Cucurbitaceae. As Blume describes the flowers as monoecious, his material was 

 presumably imperfect. For the reception of the second species. Dr. Walker-Arnott, 

 in Jardine's Magazine of Zool. and Bot. for 1838, p. 551, formed the genua 

 Mackaya, and in an excellent note he discusses its affinities. Of it he says, " I 

 cannot indicate the natural order, nor even the place in the linear series which it 

 ought to occupy ;" but on the whole he was inclined to regard it as a species of 

 Olacinese near Schwpfia, but with perfectly inferior fruit. Walker-Arnott consi- 

 dered it to be also allied to Santalaceas, although diifering both from that Order 

 and from Olacineie in the absence of a central columella in its ovary ; while, from 

 Santalacese, it has the additional difference of possessing a corolla. And he suggests 

 the formation of Mackaya and Schcepfia into a small calycifloral order connected on the 

 one hand with Bantalacex and on the other with Olacinex. The third species 

 E. vagum Mast., was first published by Griffith (Notulae IV, 633 and Ic. PI. Ind. 

 Or. t. 628) as the type of a genus which, from its supposed affinity with Modecca, 

 be named Modeccopsis. The relation to Modecca is however superficial, and extends 

 only to a similarity in general habit and in the externals of the fruit. For in struc- 

 ture the flowers of Modecca are very different from those of Modeccopsis, inas- 

 much as they have no perigynous (finally epigynous) disc, and the superior ovary 



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