THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 47 



StERCULIA EDEIiPELTII. 



Leayes on long stalks, chartaceous, orate or verging into a 

 lanceolar form, blunt at the base, suddenly short-acuminate at the 

 summit, almost equally green, quite glabrous and shining on both 

 sides ; panicle narroAV, sometimes almost racemous, not very elongated ; 

 flowers small; stalijlets shorter than the calyx, as well as the flower- 

 stalks glabrous; calyces urceolar-ovate, five-lobed, outside glabrous, 

 the lobes hardly half as long as the tube or sometimes nearly as long, 

 semi-lanceolar, for a long while cohering at the summit, inside 

 papillular-rough and towards the margin bearded by straight simple 

 whitisli hair: staminal column very short; anthers crowded into a 

 globular mass; fruitlets large, mostly ripening solitarely on the 

 elongated peduncle, not stipitate, very much compressed, nearly 

 dimidiate-orbicular, few-seeded; valves comparatively thin, outside 

 brown-velvety, inside except the margin glabrous; seeds ellipsoid- 

 ovate; testa black, glabrous; cotyledons plan-convex, nearly as 

 thick as the albumen; radicle remote from the hilum. 



Towards Port Moresby, Rev. James Chalmers; near the Astrolabe- 

 Range, E. G. Edelfelt; at the base of the Owen Stanley's Range, 

 H. 0. Forbes (752.) 



A tree, flowering already in a shrubby state. Branchlets robust. 

 Leaf-stalkes 1-2 inches long. Leaves attaining a length of 10 

 inches and a breadth of 5, though often only about half that size, 

 strongly and ascendingjy but distantly costate-nerved, prominently 

 net-veined, and besides traversed by close reticulations of subtle 

 veinlets, the base of the leaves often slightly bilobed. Panicles a 

 few inches long, with most of the leaves emanating from the summits 

 of branchlets. Calyces ^ to nearly ^ an inch long, in a dry state 

 brownish-yellow, the tube also inside glabrous. Head of anthers 

 not reaching the lobes of the calyx. Stigmas of the male flowers 

 concealed. Fruitlets 2-2^ inches long, about 1^ inches broad, 

 almost obliquely ovate, rounded-blunt, amply almost bivalvularly 

 dehiscent, inside pale when dry. Seeds nearly half an inch long; 

 outer integument very thin and brittle; middle one thicker, dark- 

 coloured, somewhat elastic when fresh, slightly separated from the 

 outer by a pasty or powdered substance; innermost very thin, pale- 

 brownish, closely adnate to the albumen; cotyledons detractible from 

 the latter, more or less conspicuously veined on the free commissural 

 side. 



Specimens from three collections have enabled me, to give an 

 almost complete description of this species; but the flowers on the 

 specimens, obtained by Mr. Forbes, are of a somewhat thicker 

 texture, less turgid, also less bearded, while the lobes are longer and 

 do not remain cohering at the summit. Whether therefore possibly 

 two species are comprehended under what I described here, similar in 



