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it was sown ; but this must have been acci- 

 dental, for none of his older plants blossomed, 

 although he had them twelve feet high, and 

 eighteen years old. There is a fine healthy 

 tree of this species now in the Royal Botanic 

 Gardens at Kew, which flowered a few years 

 back for the first time. 



The tree grows to a great size, with large 

 spreading branches, and a thick and beau- 

 tiful foliage. The leaves are pinnate, com- 

 posed of sixteen or eighteen pairs of leaflets, 

 without a single one at the end : they are 

 ovate-oblong, quite entire, smooth, sessile, 

 of a bright green, spreading during the day, 

 but closing, so as to lie over each other in 

 the night : they have an acid taste. The 

 flowers come out from the sides of the 

 branches, on a long, upright, common pe- 

 duncle, six or eight together, in loose bunches, 

 of a yellow colour, veined with a reddish 

 purple. 



What we style the fruit of the tamarind 

 is only the pistil of the flowers, which be- 

 come pods, that are thick and compressed, 

 from two to five inches in length, with from 

 two to four or six seeds : these pods become 

 of a reddish brown as they ripen. The fruit 

 is, properly speaking, composed of two pods: 

 the outer pod is fleshy, and the inner one 



