STEROSPERMUM. 499 



The tree is botanically described by Eoxburgh (Flor. Iiid., iii., p. 

 104) as Bignonia suaveolens. A middle-sized tree, native of Bengal 

 and the Eastern parts of the Coromandel Coast. Flowering time, 

 the hot season ; trunk tolerably erect, though not straight ; bark 

 ash-coloured and somewhat scabrous. Leaves opposite, pinnate 

 with an odd one, from 12 to 24 inches long. Leaflets opposite, 

 from 2 to 4 pairs, oval, with long bluntish, narrow points, slightly 

 serrate, having both sides downy while young, and when full grown 

 not downy and feeling harsh : the exterior pair and odd one about 

 G inches long by o or 4 broad ; the inferior pair or pairs smaller. 

 Petioles swelled at the base, roundish, when old, scabrous. Pani- 

 cles terminal, composed of a few spreading branchlets, the first and 

 second pairs thereof opposite ; the superior dichotomous, with a 

 solitary pedicelled flower in the forks ; all are downy, and some- 

 what viscid. Flowers large, of a dark, dull crimson colour, 

 exquisitely frcirjrevnt. Calyx campanulate ; border 4-cleft, upper 

 divisions with two minute points, outside a little villous. Corol, 

 throat ample, woolly, convex above, flat and plaited boneath. 

 Border, the upper divisions shorter, erect ; the three inferior ones 

 longer and projecting, with the margins of all much curled. Fila- 

 ments 4, fertile, and between them a small sterile one. Anthers 

 twin. Germ oblong, elevated on a glandular receptacle. Stigma 

 2-lobed. 



Sir William Jones* gives the following description of the 

 flowers : — " Corolla externally light purple above, brownish purple 

 below, hairy at its convexity ; internally dark-yellow below, 

 amethystine above, exquisitely fragreint ; preferred bv bees 

 to all other flowers, and compared by the poets to the quiver of 

 Kamadeva (the Indian Cupid)." He adds: — "The whole plant, 

 except the root and stem, very downy and viscid. The fruit can 

 scarce be called a ' silique,' since the seeds are nowhere affixed to 

 the sutures ; but their wings indicate the genus, which might 

 properly have been Pterosqjermuiii ; they are very hard, but enclose 

 a white, sweet kernel, and their light coloured summits with 3 

 dark points give them the appearance of the winged insects." He 

 says, " Before I saw the fruit of this lovely plant, I suspected it to 

 be the Bignoniet Chelonoicles, which Yan PJieede calls Padri, and 

 I conceived that barbarous word to be a corruption of Patali, but 



^ Asiatic Kesearches, iv., p. 289. 



