108 xxvn. sapindackj:. [Sapindt 



sidered valueless in the N.W. Himalaya. The leaves are given as fodder to 

 cattle, the seeds are medicinal ; but the valuable part is the saponaceous pulp of 

 the fruit, which is an important article of trade in the Panjab and the North- 

 West Provinces. 



Another species of Sapindus (S. Saponaria, Linn., the West Indian Soapberry) 

 is grown in the West Indies. The fruit (and the root) are used for the same pur- 

 poses as Rltha in India ; but Macfadyen, in his ' Flora of Jamaica ' (i. 159), 

 states that it is apt to burn and injure the texture of the cloth washed with 

 it. It differs from S. detergens, by having the common petiole winged, and 

 very thin membranous petals, with an orbicular lamina, without any scale or 

 appendix. 



Erioglossum rubiginosum, Blume (S. rubiginosus, Roxb. Cor. PI. t. 62 ; Fl. 

 Ind. ii. 282), probably occurs in Oudh and the Central Provinces. I have seen 

 a specimen in bud from the Oudh forests, collected by Mr R. Thompson in 1871, 

 which scarcely leaves any doubt regarding the identification. It is a native of 

 Eastern Bengal, Burma, the hills of the Circars, and Beddome has found it in 

 the Godavery forests (Fl. Sylv. 73). In Burma the tree is one of those called 

 Thitni (red wood). Roxburgh states that the wood is strong and durable, choco- 

 late-coloured towards the centre. In Oudh it is a large tree with a straight 

 trunk, and a fine full head of foliage. The branchlets, inflorescence, and young 

 leaves are clothed with dense rusty or golden tomentum ; leaflets 8-15, alternate 

 or sub-opposite, oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, main lateral nerves on either side, 

 8-12, the common petiole ending in a downy bristle ; inflorescence a pyramidal 

 thyrsus of long racemes, bearing small 3-5-flowered cymes with linear bracts, the 

 bracts longer than buds, clothed with long rusty hairs ; sepals 5, the 2 outer 

 smaller, petals 4, longer than sepals, all on one side of the flower, bearing inside 

 above the stalk a double scale half the length of the lamina ; outer segment flat, 

 inner segment thick, like a funnel-shaped tube slit open, the opening towards the 

 inside of the petal ; stamens 8 ; disc one-sided ; ovary 3-lobed, hirsute. The 

 Indian species is closely allied to, if not identical with, Erioglossum edule, 

 Blume, a shrub or small tree in Java and the islands of the Indian Archipelago, 

 the fruit of which is eatable. 



4. ACER, Linn. 



Trees, sometimes shrubs, with limpid, rarely milky sap, and scaly buds. 

 Leaves opposite, usually exstipulate, deciduous. Flowers small, male and 

 bisexual generally on different trees, in terminal panicles, racemes, or umbel- 

 liform fascicles. Bracts usually minute and caducous. Calyx 4-12- gene- 

 rally 5-parted, deciduous, the lobes imbricate in bud. Disc thick, annular, 

 and hypogynous, or cup-shaped and more or less perigynous ; margin free, 

 lobed. Petals none, or as many as calyx-lobes, of the same colour, and 

 alternate with them, equal, erect, short-clawed, deciduous. Stamens 4-12, 

 generally 8, inserted on the disc ; filaments commonly shorter in the bi- 

 sexual, and longer in the male flowers j anthers introrse, 2-celled, the 

 cells opening longitudinally. Pistil of two carpels, style deeply bifid, 

 divisions linear or filiform, the inner face stigmatose ; ovules 2 in each 

 cell, attached to the inner angle. Fruit a double samara, consisting of 2 

 laterally-compressed nuts, at length separating from the small persistent 

 axis, the back produced into a large, membranous, and reticulate wing, 

 the lower edge of which is thickened. Seeds solitary, rarely 2 in each 

 cell ; albumen none. Embryo conduplicate, sometimes spirally convolute, 

 the cotyledons irregularly folded ; radicle generally long. 



