144 MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



peduncles are about half an inch Ion", and each furnished with a 

 joint, at which the flower turns inwards : the filaments are com- 

 monly three, but in some flowers we have found four, in others only 

 two; they are purple, united at the base, and furnished with incum- 

 bent brownish anthers j the germen is oblong, compressed, incurved, 

 standing upon a short pedicle: the style is tapering, somewhat 

 longer than the filaments, and terminated by an obtuse stigma : the 

 fruit is a pod of roundish compressed form, from three to five inches 

 long, containing two, three, or four flatfish angular shining seeds, 

 lodged in a dark pulpy matter, and covered by several rough longi- 

 tudinal fibres. The flowers, according to Jacquin, appear in Oc- 

 tober and November. 



The generic character of Tamarindus is wholly founded upon this 

 species, as no other of the same family has hitherto been discovered. 

 Though Linnaeus in his last edition of the Genera plantarum has fol- 

 lowed Jacquin's description of the Tamarindus, in observing that the 

 filaments are united at the base, a circumstance which ought to 

 have placed it in the class Monadelphia, yet notwithstanding this, 

 they neither thought proper to remove it from the class Triandria, 

 where it also has been since retained in Murray's edition of the 

 Systema Vegetabilium ; and is consequently thus classed in the 

 systematic arrangement prefixed to the first volume in the first edi- 

 tion of Woodville. Since that time however, we have had an oppor- 

 tanity of examining the recent flower of the Tamarind, from which 

 we have no doubt of its having the true character of the monadel- 

 phia class, in which we have now placed it, and for which we have 

 lately had the authority of Schreber, and that of De Loureiro. 



This tree, which appears upon various authorities, to be a native 

 of both Indies, America, Egypt, and Arabia, was cultivated in Bri- 

 tain previous to the year 1633 -, for in Johnson's edition of Gerrard 

 we are told, that in the figure of the Tamarind " is of a plant some 

 six months old, arisen of a seed : and such by sowing of seeds I 

 have seen grozHng in the garden of my deceased friend Mr. 

 Tuggy.'' Miller informs us, that Tamarind plants, " if rightly ma- 

 naged, will grow very fast ;" adding, for I have had them upwards 

 of three feet high in one summer, from seed, and have had two 

 plants, which produced flowers the same season they were sown; but 

 this was accidental, for none of the older plants have produced any 

 dowers, although I have several plants of different ages, some of 



