26 
This plant, a member of the Rue family, was discovered on 
the Santa Cruz Mountains, Jamaica, by William Purdie in 1844, 
who was making a botanical collection for the Royal Gardens 
at Kew, and plants grown from seed collected by him flowered 
there in February, 1849. In his Icones Plantarum, Sir William 
Hooker described and figured (plates 698 and 699) this new plant 
under the name of Pachystigma pteleoides. As the name Pachy- 
stigma had been used for a South African genus in the Madder 
family, Hooker’s plant was renamed two years later by Walpers 
as Peltostigma pteleoides. Subsequent collectors in Jamaica 
failed to find this species until its rediscovery, after a long search, 
by Dr. N. L. Britton and Mr. William Harris in September, 
1907, on a wooded hill at Potsdam, on the Santa Cruz Mountains, 
probably the original locality, at about 2,600 feet elevation. 
The trees were in young fruit at the time of their visit, and 
numerous seedlings were obtained from which the specimens 
at the Garden were grown. 
The Jamaica candle-wood, or ptelea-leaved peltostigma is a 
slender tree, sometimes attaining a height of eight meters. The 
leaves are alternate, the dark-green leaflets usually three, and 
closely resemble those of the hop-tree, Ptelea trifoliata, a native of 
the United States, sometimes grown in our parks. The flowers 
are an inch or more in diameter and sweet-scented, with the petals 
of a creamy white and nearly equal, and the sepals deciduous and 
unequal, the interior ones large and somewhat petal-like, the 
outer smaller. The stamens are numerous and inserted on a 
thick, fleshy disk, and the ovary is covered with short hairs giving 
it a velvety appearance. This species appears from the history 
of the living material at Kew and here to flower when at the age 
of five years. 
Herbarium specimens from southern Mexico and Guatemala 
from altitudes up to 5,500 feet appear identical with the Jamaica 
plant. 
PERCY WILSON. 
