88 BOTANICAL GAZETTE | FEBRUARY 
lar, truncate at the base, obscurely six-lobed, deciduous. Stamens 
nine, inserted on the base of the perianth, exserted; filaments 
subulate, barely united at the base; anthers oblong, attached on 
the back near the middle, introrse, two-celled, the cells opening 
longitudinally. Ovary superior, ovoid, one-celled, narrowed | 
above into a slender columnar style crowned by the funnelform 
oblique stigma; ovule solitary, basilar, anatropous ; micropyle 
subbasilar. Fruit baccate, subglobose, one-seeded, crowned with 
the remnants of the style, raised on the thickened torus of the 
flower; exocarp at first thin, of two closely united coats, the 
outer crustaceous, bright green, the inner membranaceous, silvery- 
white; in ripening becoming thick, sweet, juicy, homogeneous, 
black and lustrous, easily separable from the seed. Seed free, 
erect, depressed-globose; testa thick and hard, vertically sulcate 
with numerous narrow grooves running irregularly from the base | 
of the seed toward its apex, deeply infolded into the ruminate- | 
albumen; hilum subbasilar, minute, obscure; raphe hidden in 
the folds of the testa; embryo lateral. 2 
Trees with slender stems marked below by the ring-like scat 
of fallen leaf-stalks and clothed above with the long-persistemt — 
petiole-sheaths, or rarely stemless. Leaves terminal, induplicate — 
gradually enlarged below into elongated vaginas of coarse ibe . 
forming an open conspicuous net work generally clothed while 
young with thick hoary tomentum. Spadix interfoliar, paniculaté 
shorter than the petioles; its short primary branches incur’ ™ 
furnished with numerous short flower-bearing secondary branch 
lets from the axils of scarious acute bracts; spathes numero 
papyraceous, two-cleft at the apex. : 
The generic name is in allusion to the berry-like fruit. 
The following extra-Florida species previously referre 
