BORRAGINACES. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 15 
BOURRERIA. 
FLOWERS perfect; calyx closed in the bud, 2 to 5-toothed or divided, the lobes 
valvate in estivation ; corolla gamopetalous, 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in zstivation ; 
stamens 5; disk annular ; ovary superior, spuriously 4-celled; ovules solitary in each 
cell. Fruit a fleshy drupe. Leaves alternate or subverticillate, without stipules. 
Bourreria, Browne, Nat. Hist. Jam. 168 (1756). — Adan- licher, Gen. 645. — Engler & Prantl, Pfllanzenfam. iv. pt. 
son, Fam. Pl. ii. 177. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. ii. 840 iii. 86. 
(excl. Hymenesthes).— Baillon, Hist. Pl. x. 392 (excl. Morelosia, La Llave & Lexarza, Nov. Veg. Desc. i. 1 (1824). 
Hymenesthes). Crematomia, Miers, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, iii. 
Beurreria, Jacquin, Hist. Stirp. Am. 44 (1763). — End- 301 (1869) ; Contrib. ii. 242. 
Small trees or shrubs, with watery juices and fibrous roots. Leaves involute in vernation, alternate 
or occasionally subverticillate, obovate-oblong or ovate, glabrous, or scabrous on the upper surface. 
Flowers on slender pedicels, bracteolate, small or large, in terminal corymbose dichotomous cymes 
usually many-flowered, sometimes few or rarely one-flowered. Bracts and bractlets linear-lanceolate, 
caducous. Calyx closed before anthesis, globose or ovoid, splitting in two to five short teeth, persistent 
and sometimes accrescent under the flower. Corolla white, campanulate or infundibuliform, the tube 
short or elongated, often enlarged in the throat, fivelobed, the lobes broadly ovate, spreading after 
anthesis. Stamens five, inserted on the tube of the corolla, introrse, included or exserted ; filaments 
filiform ; anthers ovate or oblong, often rugulose, two-celled, opening laterally by longitudinal slits. 
Ovary sessile on the thin annular disk, incompletely four-celled by the development of the two parietal 
placentas, narrowed into a terminal style two-parted toward the apex, the divisions more or less coales- 
cent ; stigma truncate, capitate, or clavate; ovules solitary in each cell, attached on the back near the 
middle of the inner face of the revolute placenta, anatropous ; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. 
Drupe subglobose, tipped with the remnants of the style; exocarp thin and fleshy ; endocarp somewhat 
four-lobed and separable into four thick-walled bony one-seeded nutlets rounded and furnished on 
the back with a thick spongy longitudinally many-ridged appendage, flattened on their converging 
inner faces, and attached at the apex to a filiform column. Seed terete, filling the seminal cell longi- 
tudinally incurved round a small cavity opposite an elevated oblong scar on one of the inner faces 
of the nutlet and connected with the hilum by a narrow passage ; testa membranaceous, light brown. 
Embryo axile in fleshy albumen ; cotyledons plane; radicle slender, elongated, superior, turned toward 
the hilum. 
Bourreria is tropical American, with sixteen or eighteen species’ distributed from southern Florida, 
where one species occurs, through the West Indies to southern Mexico, Central America, and Colombia. 
The genus is not known to possess economic properties. 
The generic name perpetuates that of J. A. Bourrer, an apothecary at Nuremberg. 
1 Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Spec. ili. 67.— Cat. Pl. Cub. 209.— Miers, Ann. §& Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, iii. 
Kunth, Syn. Pl. Zquin. ii. 190. — Grisebach, FT. Brit. W. Ind. 481; 199; Contrib. ii. 230.— Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. ii. 369. 
