817 



tainable the pods are relished by goats; and for scenic 

 effect there is. perhaps no prettier tree, growing as it 

 often does on a flat rocky subsoil which will carry no 

 other tree. In alluvial soil it responds freely and gives 

 better growth, on hot rocky banks it is common, but it is 

 never found in high dense forest. Bark rough, thick, 

 dark; formerly much used locally in the tanning of leath- 

 er, and even now, at about half the price per ton as com- 

 pared with black wattle, it pays to employ it for local 

 use, but not for export, as the percentage of tannin for 

 the bulk is too low. 



"The doorn-boom is the host of an innumerable lot of 

 pests, being often cleared of foliage by caterpillars of 

 several large moths, and by bagwors; its timber is often 

 bored by Apate dorsalis and Chrysobothris dorsata; certain ants 

 occasionally inhabit the thorns and induce a most thorny 

 development, strange gall abortions or malformations of 

 pods are caused by a fungus; another fungus OEcidium orna- 

 mentale makes artistic floriated curls of the young twigs; 

 and Loranthus and mistletoe are frequent parasites. 



"Doorn-boom makes a strong rough hedge if soaked seed 

 is sown in line and kept watered till germination has 

 taken place. It is also useful for sowing in beds of in- 

 termittent rivers with a view to arrest silt during future 

 floods. It suffers severely during soft snowstorms, the 

 horizontal branches and foliage breaking under a heavy 

 weight of snow." (Sim, Forest Flora of Cape Colony.) 



AchradelpJia mcumrnosa (L. ) Cook. (Sapotaceae . ) 39357. 

 Seeds of the sapote presented by the Costa Rican National 

 Museum, San Jose. "The sapote has an open crown of large, 

 lanceolate, coarsely-veined, deciduous leaves, and fruit 

 with yellow flesh and a firmer and more uniform texture 

 (than the sapodilla), not crisp like the flesh of an ap- 

 ple, but more like that of a cooked carrot or squash. The 

 triangular-fusiform seeds of the sapote are very large and 

 thick and have the whole inner face covered by an enormous 

 hilum. The sapote is of no commercia] importance, though 

 the fruit is used extensively for food by the native pop- 

 ulations of Central American regions and the West Indies. 

 It ascends into the plateau regions of Central America." 

 (Adapted from 0. F. Cook, Nomenclature of the sapote and 

 the sapodilla, Cont. Nat. Herb., vol. 16, 1913.) 



Annona cherimola Miller. (Annonaceae . ) 39352, 39359. 

 Seeds of the chirimoya from Bogota, Colombia, presented by 

 Capt. H. R. Lemly, and by Mr. Robert Ancizar of the Colom- 

 bian Legation. "The principal fruit cultivated by the ab- 

 original inhabitants of western South America. Endemic in 

 the Andes, and subtropical rather than tropical in its 



