NAT. ORDKR. MYRTACE^E. 117 



placed cross-ways, and at nearly right or wide angles with the 

 branch ; very rarely more than once compound ; the pedicles divari- 

 cate, stout, round, smooth and shining, and pointed at the top ; Jlow- 

 er-buds inversely pear-shaped, hard, firm, purplish-red below, the 

 imbricate sepals green ; sepals four, patent concave, transversely 

 oval, permanent as a crown to the fruit, and then erect and conni- 

 vent; petcds greenish or white, much larger than the sepals, round, 

 very concave, patent, deciduous, with very numerous stamens, which 

 are curiously subspirally involute, as if in four sets, in the buds ; Jil- 

 amcnts long, the outer ones an inch and a half, white, with a very 

 pale primrose or greenish yellow tinge, becoming deeper by age ; the 

 innermost gradually shorter, seated on a raised, prominent, suboc- 

 tagonal ring at the base of tlie sepals ; anthers very small, oblong, 

 and of a yellowish white ; sti/le longer than the stamens, white sub- 

 ulate, simple, persistent. A naked, hollow, cup-shaped square, or 

 four-sided space surrounds its base, within the raised staminiferous 

 ring ; but I have never seen the filaments exposing this (as figured 

 by some botanists,) unless when part of them had fallen ofi". On the 

 contrary, they quite conceal the whole centre of the flower, incurv- 

 ing rather, and becoming denser towards the style. They retain 

 something of a spiral tendency, acquired in the bud, for sometime 

 after full expansion. (9t'«r?/ uniformly two celled, containing numer- 

 ous angular, narrow-oblong, ovules, attached by one end to a pla- 

 centa, prominent into each cell from the central axis or dissepiment , 

 fruit a subglobose, one-celled, rather dry, smooth, drape-like berry, 

 approaching always more or less to pear-shaped, about an inch in 

 diameter, crowned by the persistent calyx, and umbilicate at the 

 top, of a delicate pale oehre-yellow, suflTused more or less on one side 

 with rose color, and with a very powerful smell and taste of rose- 

 water ; the flesh about two lines thick, sweet, but somewhat dry and 

 mealy, or rather grumose ; a large cavity inside of one cell, witii 

 merely traces of the obliterated dissepiment, containing from one to 

 three large brown seeds, these are loose and rattle within the cavity. 



