﻿MR. J. MIERS ON THE LECYTHIDACE^. I7I 



exuding a purple-staining juice when slightly pressed ; it has at its hase a shallow cup- 

 shaped ring attached to the disk, charged inside with short densely crowded stamini- 

 ferous appendages, and laterally expanded into a smooth incurring lio-ula which sud 



denly coils round into a fleshy knoh, as in Couratari ; it then widens into a semiglobose 

 inverted hood, which is again retroflected upward, and ohsoletely fringed on its margin ; 

 this is not echinated as in Couratari, but the appendages are all consolidated into a'soft 

 fleshy mass which envelops and conceals the knob ; each club-shaped appendage of the 

 basal ring bears a short filament and a 2-celled anther ; the ovary is quite inferi'or, semi- 

 globose or turbinate, mostly 4-ceUed, or 3-celled in one species, 5-celled in another,Vith 

 about 6 collateral ovules in each ceU, aU erect, and fixed on the bottom of the central 

 axis ; the vertex is slightly concave, with a thick short fungiform style in the middle, 

 and an umbonate stigma as in Couroupita. The pyxidium is not nearly so thick and 

 solid as in Cariniana; in texture and shape it more resembles that of Couratari, being 

 quite cylindrical, round at the base, truncated at its summit, where it is marked by the 

 usual two zones, with a narrow band between them ; it opens on the opercular zone, which 

 has the same diameter as the pericarp ; the operculum above is depressed, slightly 

 pulvinated, concave and umbonated in the centre, and beneath is intimately conjoined 

 with the columella, which at first is 3-5-angular, the angles united to the wall of the 

 pericarp so as to form the cells, as in Couratari and Cariniana ; at maturity the columella 

 shrinks very much, becomes tapering and free from the pericarp, when, still attached to 

 the operculum, it falls to the ground, leaving the seeds to drop also. The seeds arc few, 

 arranged imbricatively, and fixed to the columella by a basal hilum ; they are linearly 

 oblong, thickish, somewhat flattened on the anterior and posterior faces, acute and much 

 jag-ed on the straight margins, have a dark or reddish colour, are rough behind, cor- 

 rugate-tuberculous in front, unequally 2-lobed at the base, the hilum being on the 

 posterior side of one of these lobes ; and thus they bear the form and appearance of the 

 seeds of Tyloderma, a genus of the HippocrateacecB, formerly described'; the testa, as 

 thick as a sixpence, is filled everywhere with bundles of spiral vessels, is smooth inside, 

 ana lined with a semiadherent blackish membranaceous inner integument, which covers 

 the exalbuminous embryo ; this latter is of a long fusiform shape, slightly compressed 

 and tapering towards each extremity, is of an opaque white colour -, and when boiled in 

 water or soaked in that fluid for a few days, it becomes as soft as a custard, but is again 

 consolidated by drying. It appears to me a homogeneous macropodous radicle, con- 

 sistmg of an external exorhiza easily softened, and a harder terete internal neorhiza of 

 Its entire length, obtusely pointed at each extremity ; and it probably germinates as 

 in Lecythis, one end protruding in its growth to form the ascending stem, the other to 

 extend into a root. 



Unas (Plate XXXVI. c) was established, in 1753, by Linnaeus ', upon a Jamaica plant, 

 fifst mentioned by Sloane ' under the name of Anchovy-pcar, and by P. Brown as a species 

 ^UJalophyllum\ Jussieu in 1789 % favouring the idea of Brown, placed it among the 



f'tijerce. Swartz first gave a good diagnosis of its generic characters in 1791*. 



^ Linn. Trans, vol. xxviii. p. 413, tab. 29. * Sp. Plant. 732 ; Gen. Plant, (edit. Schreb.) 732. 



Jam. ii. 123, tab. 217. figs. 1 & 2. •» Ibid. p. 245. * Gen. p. 257. * Obs. p. 215. 



