﻿MR. J. MIERS ON THE LECYTHIDACE^. 



169 



basal ring, is long and bare, suddenly coiling twice inwards into a fleshy knob, and again 

 quickly recurved in the form of a large inverted semiglobose head, densely echinated 

 with pointed, flat, imbricating appendages on the upper side (not on the inside, as in 

 LecytUs), and concealing the involuted fleshy knob ; these external appendages are quite 

 destitute of stamens. The turbinate ovary is inferior, 3-celled, with several ovules fixed 

 in the base ; the vertex is hollow, with a raised crenated ring within the disk, and is 

 furnished in its centre with a very broad, elevated, umboniform style, surmounted by an 



articulated, polished, glob 



b 



ma, hollow in the middle. The fruit and seed were 



first figured by Aublet^ afterwards well drawn by Poiteau^ and Richard ^ lastly by 

 Berg, as before stated, under the name of Lecythopsis \ The pyxidium is trigonoidly 

 cylindrical, often obconical in form, with two zonal lines near the summit, and a narrow 

 interzonal band, the lower line formed by the vestiges of the sepals, the upper one 



denoting the line of dehiscence round the depressed umbonated operculum ; this latter is 

 agglutinated to the thick triangular central column, whose cuneiform angles form as 

 many thickened dissepiments, at first attached to the inner wall of the pericarp, thus 

 leaving three equal intervening spaces, or flat cells : when the fruit ripens, this columella 

 shrinks, and the edges of the dissepiments become detached from the wall of the pericarp, 

 the operculum and columella fall out, carrying with it the many large-winged seeds, 

 imbricately attached to it, to be soon scattered by the wind : the cylindrical pericarp, 



endered vacant 



d unilocular 



somewhat thin in substance, with 



cracking bark, which covers a reticulated latticework of woody fibres. The seeds, about 

 6 in each cell, are large in area, extremely thin, oblong in form, with a compressed 

 scutiform cellule in the centre, one third of its length, and surrounded equally all round 



by a broad submembranaceous wing, all collaterally imbricated 



attached by tl 



base to the lower portion of the columella ; the scutiform centre contains an cxalbu- 

 minous embryo, which fills its space, and is covered by a membranaceous inner integu- 

 ment ; the embryo consists of a long terete radicle, pointing downwards towards the 

 hilum, and curving abruptly at its summit, is there united to 2 longer descending coty- 

 ledons, which are broad, foliaceous, deeply plicated and corrugated, thus, in an inverted 

 form, resembling the embryo of Couroitpita. 



The genus Cariniana (Plate XXXV. c) of Casaretto has been acknowledged by few bota- 

 nists; but its floral and carpical characters have been well illustrated by Berg, under the 

 name of Couratari, for which he singularly mistook them. 

 vaUd genus, containing several species, all trees of noble proportions, mostly from 100 



Cariniana. howev 



Th 



to 120 feet in height, with gigantic trunks, often spreading out in large buttresses 

 species, some of which are known only from their fruits, extend from Central Brazil to 

 the iVmazonas region, one being known from Trinidad. The leaves vary much 



several species, in some 1 inch long, in others more than a fcxjt in length ; but 



inflorescence, more constant in "character, is peculiar, alway 



idc-spreadm 



very 



' PI. Giiian. tab. 290. 



• Am. Sc. Nat. /. c. tab. 21 



* M^m. Mu8. xiii. tab. 8. 



* rior. Bras. I. c. tab. 75, 70. 



