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XIV. Observations on some Genera of Plants connected with the Flora of 

 Guiana. By George Bentham, Esq., F.L.S. 



Read June 19th, 1838. 



1. Symplocos, Ciponima, Stemmatosiphon, Alstonia and Hopea. 



XN Pohl's Plantanim Brasilice Icônes, vol. ii. pi. 157, 158, and 159, three 

 plants are figured under the name of Stemmatosiphon, and referred to MeUacea^ 

 on account of some similarity in the disposition of the stamina and the form 

 of the corolla, if considered as polypetalous. Adrien de Jussieu, however, in 

 a note added to his excellent memoir on Meliacece {Mém. du Mus. vol. xix. 

 p. 152.) adverted to the simple leaves, indefinite stamina, &c., as incompatible 

 with that family ; but, misled by several errors in the details of structure 

 figured by Pohl, was unable to point out satisfactorily the group to which it 

 should be removed*. On the occasion of determining the plants collected in 

 Guiana by Mr. Schomburgk, I was struck witii the apparent aflSnity of one of 

 them to the specimens of Pohl's Stemmatosiphons, which I liad obtained at 

 Vienna, and was led into an examination of that genus, which proved to be 

 identical with the Linnean Symplocos, as first constituted, although differing 

 in many points from many of the other species which have since been asso- 

 ciated with it. 



The genus Symplocos was originally founded by Jacquin, and adopted by 

 Linnaeus, for the S. martinicensis, which was thus characterized by Linnoeus 

 in his Genera Plantarum: "■ Perianthium monophyllum, semiquinquefidum, 

 parvum, laciniis subrotundis erectis. Petala quinque, oblonga, obtusa, erecta, 

 superne patentissima. Filamenta plurima, subulata, plana, petalis breviora, 



* The remarkable circumstance in particular of a trifid stigmate, with a quadrilocular ovarium, 

 figured in each of the three plates, does not exist in any flower that I have dissected of either of the 

 species. 



