Tacca.| TACCACEAE. 437 
length of the meget the short omiar'e connate halfway. Ovules 
ule 
many in each cell, biseriate, horiz . Capsule obovate, 4—5” long, 
opening from the top ae gas globose, with a dark crusta- 
ceous testa. Embryo small, nearly axile. — Wawra, in Flora, 1875, 
p. 246 
High mountains of Hawaii, and Haleakala, Maui! from 3500 ft. upward to about 
7000 ft. The natives use the acrid juice to give a blue stain to their tattoo-marks 
OrpErR LXXXIII. TACCACEAE. 
Contains only two genera, the one not represented here differing from 
Tacea in a capsular fruit. 
1. TACCA, Forst. 
Flowers hermaphrodite, Perianth corolla-like or herbaceous, the tube 
connate with the ovary, the limb superior, parted into 6 biseriate connivent 
or patent lobes. Stamens 6, inserted on the tube or the base of the 
anthers introrse, 2-celled, the cells parallel, adnate to the inside of the 
ood. Ovary idherant 1-celled, with 3 parietal placentas. Ovules numerous, 
horizontal, anatropous. Style short and thick, trigonous; stigma orbicular 
or peltate, divided into 3 bifid or emarginate rays. Berry many-seeded. 
Seeds angular, with a coriaceous striate testa. Embryo minute, at the base 
of a corneous albumen. — Herbs with a tuberous or creeping root-stock. 
Leaves radical, on long — entire or palmatisect or ER with 
anastomosing veins. Flowers umbellate at the end of a lon ape, in 
volucrate by several large epeancn or colored bracts, the inner | Gieskileka 
liform, longer than the umbel and pendulous. Perianth dirty-brown or 
ara ne when d 
us of 9 species, 3 of which are American, the others inhabitants of the tropics 
of oe Old V World. 
. T. pinnatifida, Forst. — Kunth, Enum. Pl. V, 458. — Tuber large, 
eRe Leaves on et petioles of 1—3 ft., membranous, pedately 
tripartite to the base, the two external segments again deeply bipartite, 
the five lobes irregularly pinnatisect into lanceolate acute segments; the 
whole blade 6—10' & 10—20‘. Scape 3 ft. long, grooved, fistulous. Involu- 
cral leaves 6—12, ovate, somewhat obtuse, contracted at the base, 1'/2—2'. 
Flowers numerous on pedicels of about 1‘, the linear bractlets 4--5’. 
Perianth greenish, bell-shaped, 5“, parted beyond the middle into 6 lan- 
ceolate-acute lobes. Stamens about half the length of the lobes, a 
anther-cells discreet, their apices free at last. Berry triquetrous. — 
Journ. Bot . IM, 261, and Fi. Vit. p. 102. — T. littorea, Rumph. — T. ocea- 
nica, Nutt 
