190 SAFFORD: DESMOPSIS, A NEW GENUS 
4. Desmopsis bibracteata (Robinson) Safford 
Unona bibracteata Robinson, Am. Jour. Sci. III. 50: 175. 1895. 
A shrub or small tree with slender branches. Very young 
branchlets minutely hirtellous, soon glabrous or nearly so. Leaves 
not acuminate, oblong-lanceolate or rhomboid, sometimes slightly 
falcate, narrowed to an obtuse or rounded apex, connected below _ 
to a very short thickish petiole, when very young clothed beneath 
with fulvous hairs, at length green and glabrous on both surfaces, 
5.5-14 cm. long, 2.5-4 cm. broad, firm but not coriaceous im 
texture. Flowers light yellow, very fragrant, borne on very 
slender wiry recurved pedicels about 2.5 cm. long, subtended by a 
suborbicular cordate bract about 1.3 cm. in diameter and some- 
times bearing a minute clasping bract below the middle, rarely a 
second flower growing from the axil of the basal bract; peduncle 
opposite a leaf, very short (2-5 mm. long). Calyx three-parted, 
the segments broadly ovate, rounded at the apex, to 5 mm. long. 
Petals increasing in length after anthesis, at first broadly ovate, 
densely clothed on the outside with pale grayish brown hairs, at 
length linear-oblong, about 18 mm. long and 5-6 mm. broad, obtuse 
or rounded at the tips, and glabrous or nearly so, with the edges 
usually revolute. Stamens numerous, about 1.5 mm. long, broadly 
cuneate, the brown connective expanded above the pale yellow 
pollen sacs in the form of a thick concave saucer-shaped disk. 
Carpels fourteen to twenty, sessile at first, ovaries oblong, clothed 
with whitish or pale yellowish ascending hairs and bearing S de- 
pressed-spheroid glandular hairy brown style, styles constricted 
at the base, adhering together after pollination, and soon falling 
off ina mass. Fruit a cluster of slender-pedicelled two- or three- 
seeded berries, red when fresh, at length turning brown, covered 
with appressed hairs when young, at length glabrate, pericarp thin, 
constricted between the seeds, these arranged in a vertical row, 
disk-shaped, 5-7 mm. in diameter, marked with a groove aroun 
the periphery, the end one depressed-hemispherical or convex on 
one side; stipes (carpophores) slender and wire-like, 5-8 mm. long 
I mm. thick. [PLaTeE 9,.] 
Type in the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University, collected 
by Charles Wright in Nicaragua, on the North Pacific Exploring 
Expedition under Commanders Ringgold and Rodgers in 1855 
(No. 1), bearing the label “‘ Unona violacea Dun. aff.’ Duplicate 
of the type bearing the same data in the United States National 
Herbarium (sheet No. 2517). 
DIsTRIBUTION: From Nicaragua to Chiriquf, Republic of 
Panama. 
