13 JATEORHIZA CALUMBA 



\ inch diameter, nearly sessile, arranged on the divaricate 

 branches of large, drooping, axillary, lax panicles, the male pani- 

 cles 12 18 inches long, the female much shorter, rachis and 

 branches setose-hispid, or nearly glabrous, bracts minute or none. 

 Male flowers : sepals 6 in two rows, erect, strongly imbricate, 

 oval-oblong, blunt, smooth ; petals 6 in a single row, much 

 shorter than the sepals, oval, pale green, blunt; incurved, so as to 

 include the stamens ; stamens 6, as long as the petals, and oppo- 

 site to them, filaments slender, thickened upwards, and turned 

 outwards at the top, anthers 4-celled, extrorse ; carpels quite rudi- 

 mentary or none. Female flowers (not seen) : petals emarginate 

 at the apex ; stamens 6, sterile, half the length of the petals ; 

 carpels 3, free, erect, oblong, densely glandular-pilose, ovary 1- 

 celled, with one ovule attached to centre of the inner angle, styles 

 short, thick, stigmas with 2 or 3 spreading points. Fruit of 3 

 (or less by abortion) ovoid, fleshy drupes about the size of a 

 hazel-nut, with a rather scanty pulp, putamen thin, densely 

 covered with longish hairs, which are immersed in the pulp, 

 rounded on the back, flattened on the inner side. Seed solitary, 

 filling the fruit, curved both laterally and from above downwards, 

 embryo buried in the abundant fleshy endosperm, which is trans- 

 versely fissured on the inner side, cotyledons foliaceous, flattened, 

 divaricate, radicle small, terete. 



Habitat. A native of forests in the Mozambique and Quili- 

 mane countries of Eastern tropical Africa, especially abundant 

 along the course of the Lower Zambesi. It is also met with cul- 

 tivated on the little islets of Ibo and Mozambique off the same 

 coast. All the Calumba root of commerce comes from these 

 Portuguese possessions. The plant has at various times been 

 cultivated at Calcutta, in the Mauritius, the Seychelles, and Mada- 

 gascar, and specimens may be seen in a flowerless state at Kew 

 and the Botanic Society 's Gardens. 



The amount of hispidity is liable to great variation, and the 

 leaves present a considerable range in size and difference in the 

 form of the basal lobes. We have therefore followed Hanbury in 

 combining /. Calumba and /. palmata, Miers (/. Miersii, Oliv.), 



