PLATE 313, 



PAVETTA OBOVATA, E. Meyer. (Fl. Cap. Vol. III. p. 20). 

 Natural Order, RUBIAOEAE. 



A shrub, reaching to 1 to 12 feet in height, and bearing axillary and terminal 

 corymbs of pure white flowers. Bark light-coloured, smooth and glabrous, twigs 

 compressed at nodes. Leaves opposite, petiolate, stipulate, oblong to obovate, 

 bright green, glabrous and shining above, pale and duller below, tapering gradually 

 to the short petiole, obtuse at apex, margins quite entire, scrobiculate in axils of 

 main veins beneath ; 2 to 3 inches long, 1 to 1-| inch wide, petiole 1 to 5 lines long. 

 Inflorescence corymbose, dichotomously branching, pedicels 2 to 4 lines long ; bracts 

 small, deltoid, early deciduous. Calyx gamosepalous, 1 line long, glabrous, 4- 

 toothed, teeth acute, as long as the tube. Corolla gamopetalous, white, tube \ inch 

 long, cylindrical, limb 4-lobed, lobes more than half as long as the tube, pa'ently 

 reflexed. Stamens 4, on corolla at throat, filaments very short; anthers, linear- 

 elongate, sagittate, 2-celled. Ovary inferior, 2-celled, cells 1-ovuled; style long, 

 much exserted, stigma clavate, entire or subentire, minutely hispid. Fruit as large 

 as a pea, shining, crowned by the remains of the calyx lobes. 



Habitat : NATAL : In Coast bush. 



Drawn and described from specimens gathered near Durban, February, 1903, 

 Wood, No. 8704. 



The genus Pavetta includes 60 or more described species, of which 11 are 

 South African and 27 in Tropical Africa, the remainder scattered in the Eastern 

 Hemisphere, and it is quite probable that both in Natal and in Tropical Africa 

 there are species not yet identified. Pavetta is said, in the " Flora Capensis," to 

 be " the vernacular name of P. indica in Malabar." All the Natal species have 

 white flowers, and some of them are well worth cultivation. 



Fig. 1, corolla opened; 2, calyx and ovary; 3, stamen; 4, portion of style 

 and stigma ; 5, young fruit ; 6, cross-section of ovary ; all enlarged. 



