1892.] Briefer Articles. 419 
inches long; leaflets 7, very variable in size (the largest on petiolues r 
to 3% inches long), oblong to ovate, acuminate, rounded or truncate 
at base, serrate, glabrate in age, 2 to ro inches long, often 3 inches 
broad: flowers arranged in a large terminal panicle of small cymes, 8 
inches long, with short glandular-pubescence throughout: cymes few- 
flowered, with deciduous scarious bracts; pedicels 6 lines long: calyx 
closed in bud, deeply cleft and two-lipped in flower, 6 lines long: 
corolla yellow, tubular, 5-lobed; tube 1 to 1% inches long; limb 1% 
inches broad: stamens 4, included, didynamous; filaments incurved, 
glabrous except at base; anther cells glabrous, oblong; sterile filament 
1% lines long: ovary sessile: pods 12 inches or more long, 1o-ribbed, 
_glandular-pubescent and loculicidally dehiscent: seeds in 2 rows.— 
Common on the mountains about Colima and cultivated about the 
town. Collected by Capt. John Donnell Smith, at Cuyuta in the De- 
partment of Escuintla, at an alt. of 200 feet, April, 1890, no. 2070; and, 
also, by Dr. Edward Palmer, at Colima, Jan. 9 to Feb. 6, 1891, no. 1098. 
This is said to be one of the most beautiful trees of Mexico, and is 
against the sky like golden clouds. . 
The following note is from a letter of J. D. Smith, Jan. 7, 1892: “The 
$ were too branchless for my servant to climb, too stout for him to 
Il with his machete, and too high for me to discern what manner of 
were those which occasionally showed themselves among the 
ets. My flowers were all picked up on the ground. I think there 
Must be many trees in those countries, of which botanists have not 
4 . 
been able easily to collect specimens, and which, therefore, remain 
known.” 
have not been able to place in any known species this pyre 
tree. It seems curious that a tree so widely distributed, of such at- 
ained unknown to botanists. The species, while not agreeing 1 all 
ects with Zadcbuia, answers better to this than to any other known 
us. In its inflorescence and ribbed pods it is more like Godmannia 
Cytistax, but does not agree in other particulars. —J. By, Rosh, 
't of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 
