88 SAPINDACEiE. 



My plant (3010) however appears to be the same as Beddome's Nos. 1424 

 and 1426, and not V. himalayana Brand in which species the Nilgiris and 

 Pulney specimens have been put. Wight's Ic. t. 965 is more like it than 

 like V. himalayana BraJidis, and Wight in his description of the plate says 

 it is not the latter. 



SAPINDACE/E. 



The two genera which grow wild here differ so much 

 that it is not easy to illustrate in them the characters of 

 the family, and the different tribes into which it is 

 divided are considered by some systematists as distinct. 

 The Soap-nut and introduced Litchee of the plains, the 

 common Horse-chestnut of England {Fr. Marrond'Ind, 

 Ger. Rosskastanie), and the trifoliate Allophyllus Cobbe of 

 Coonoor and lower levels, are examples of one tribe, the 

 SAPINDE^, mainly tropical, in which the seed has a 

 large fleshy aril (the edible part of the Litchee). The 

 Maples of south-east Europe and North America and 

 Japan (Fr. Erable, Ger. Ahorn) are types of a second 

 tribe, the ACERINE/E, in which the fruit divides into 

 one-seeded parts which are often as in the Sycamore and 

 Maple {Acer) winged. (There is a tree of A. oblongum 

 in the garden of Fir Grove, Ootacamund.) Dodoncea 

 belongs to a third tribe in which the fruit is a septicidal 

 capsule; and Turpinia to a fourth ; both distinguished 

 from the first and second tribes by the stamens being 

 outside the disc, and the fourth one is also distinguished 

 by the peculiar hard-coated seeds. 



As given in the Gen. Plant, and F.B.I. the family is a fairly 

 large one of betv^^een 400 and 500 species, scattered all over the 

 world but more especially in the tropics. 



The natne is simply sapo-indicus tke Indian Soap-nut. 



DODONifJA. F.B.I. 44 XXI. 



Shrubs with alternate exstipulate leaves, greenish or 

 brownish unisexual or bisexual flowers with small sepals* 



