MALVACEAE. 83 



are niches for the numerous seeds. These (figs. 1:38, 129), which 

 constitute the serviceable part of the Cacao tree, are irregularly 

 ovoid and enclose under their coats a large embryo with short 

 conical radicle hidden between the cotyledons which are thick, 

 fleshy, corrugated and folded upon themselves, and between whose 

 folds the albumen is scarcely represented by some mucous ru- 

 diments sometimes even wholly absent. Besides the common 

 species the genus includes four or five others, all natives of tropical 

 America. 1 These are trees or shrubs, with simple alternate petiolate 

 leaves, accompanied by two small lateral caducous stipules. Their 

 flowers are solitary, or arranged in racemose cymes growing in the 

 axil of the existing leaves, or more frequently upon the wood of the 

 trunk, and of the old branches, and in the axils of fallen 2 leaves. 



Under the generic name of Herrania three or four Cacaos have 

 been distinguished, whose petals, occasionally very long, are linear 

 and involute-circinate in the bud, and whose leaves are compound- 

 digitate, so that this genus scarcely deserves to be preserved. 

 Beside it, on account of having multiovulate cells and fertile stamens, 

 not solitary, the six following genera are placed in this subseries : — 

 Guazuma, which generally has petals with linear bifid limb, two or 

 three fertile stamens in each bundle, a muricate fruit, and seeds with 

 fleshy albumen ; Scaphopetalum, which has obovate-cucullate petals, 

 without apiculate leaf, and ternate anthers, sessile upon the urceolus of 

 the androceum, in the interval of the staminodes ; Leptonychia, which 

 has short and concave petals, and fertile stamens grouped in pairs, 

 accompanied outside by one or several sterile stamens; Abroma, which 

 has petals analogous to those of Theobroma, with superposed bundles, 

 each formed of from two to four fertile stamens, and a membra- 

 nous capsular fruit; finally, Mawioellia, which greatly resembles 

 the Lasiojjetalece by its very small glanduliform petals, but 

 which has double fertile oppositipetalous stamens, an ovary with 

 incomplete cells, and a woody indehiscent fruit with longitudinal 

 wings. 



dron and which are, it is said, the cells of the H. B.,Pl. Mquin., i. 104, t. 30.— H. B. K., Nor. 



endocarp stretched and dried. The pulp is also Gen. et Spec, v. 315. — A. S. H., Ft. Bras. Mer. 



transversed here and there by slightly consistent i. 147. — Griseb., Fl. Brit. W.-Incl., 91. — Tr. 



longitudinal fascicles, seemingly dependent on the et Pl., in Ann. Sc. Nat., ser. 4, xvii. 336. — 



pericarp and the destroyed partitions. W.u.p., Sep., 1, 339; Ann., vii. 430. 

 1 Aubl., G-man. , ii*. 683, t. 275 {Cacao).— s See Adansonia, ix. 343, 315. 



G 2 



