456 Floricidtural and Botanical Notices, 



figured and described in the Botanical Magazine for June, t. 3158. and 

 3159. It is a tree from 50 ft. to 60 ft. high, and with a trunk often more 

 than two feet in diameter : the wood is soft. The branches are spreading, 

 and covered with a smooth bark ; the leaves, which are alternate, from 

 8 in. to 10 in. long, and broadly lanceolate, are the most copious at the 

 extremities of the branches. The racemes of flowers are from 1 ft. to 3 ft. 

 in length ; produced on the former year's branches, and upon different parts 

 of the trunk, bearing a great many, sometimes a hundred, flowers, of a very 

 large size, and very splendid in colour ; and, moreover, are endowed with a 

 most delicious odour. The flower-buds, shortly before expanding, are of 

 about the size of a medlar : the expanded flowers, according to the figure, 

 are from 4 in. to 5 in. across. They are yellowish on the outside, with a 

 tinge of red crimson-lilac within, and spread out horizontally. The petals 

 to each flower are six, rarely seven, leathery in texture, unequal, somewhat 

 orbicular, and much waved and concave. The details of the structure, and 

 arrangement of the stamens and pistils, seed-vessel and seeds, are highly 

 interesting in a botanical point of view ; and for these we refer the reader 

 to the original article, just remarking that it presents a most extraordinary 

 arrangement of its stamens, these being seated on the face of a fleshy 

 strap-like disk towards its extremitj', which grows out from beside the 

 germen, and would project the stamens quite away from the stigma, but 

 that a fold in the centre of the stamen-bearing strap brings the stamens 

 in direct contact with the surface of the stigma. Although a raceme con- 

 sists of 50 to 100 flowers, it produces but one or two fruits. The fruit is 

 round, reddish, rough to the touch, and from 4 in. to 8 in. in diameter, 

 and, from its size and form, has procured for the tree the name of the 

 cannon-ball tree. The fallen pericarps, or fruits, which strew the ground 

 beneath this tree, in Cayenne, and exhibit the scar or hole by which they 

 were attached to the fruit-stalk, so nearly resemble the bomb- shell, that 

 one might easily, at first sight, imagine that a company of artillery had 

 bivouacked in its shade. The fruit, or pericarp, is occupied internally by 

 pulp, which, when ripe, is of the colour of wine lees, and through which 

 are scattered an indeterminate number of seeds, each larger than a pea, 

 and invested with a leathery membrane, which is woolly externally. The 

 shell of the fruit is used, in South America, for domestic purposes, as the 

 calabash. The pulp contains sugar ; gum; malic, citric, and tartaric acids ; 

 and is employed to afford a refreshing drink in fevers ; but, in the perfectly 

 ripe state, it exceeds whatever is filthy, stinking, and abominable in nature; 

 yet the scent is remarkably vinous, and so durable that the Rev. L. Guilding, 

 on examining some portions of the fruit that had been preserved in rum 

 for two or three years, found the native odour of the plant so strong, as 

 to render a continuance in the apartment almost insupportable. Insects 

 revel in this disgusting and putrid pulp, Coleoptera and Forficulas (ear- 

 wigs) feed upon it, while the -Formicas (ants) find a shelter in the hollow 

 of the shells. Dr. Hooker, for much of the material out of which he has 

 elaborated the luminous figures and descriptions of this tree and its parts, 

 professes himself indebted to his friend the Rev. Lansdown Guilding of 

 St. Vincent. It appears that a living specimen of the tree does not exist 

 in any European collection of plants ; and Dr. Hooker despairs of seeing 

 it flourish in any region beyond the tropics. The tree is an inhabitant, 

 and one of the greatest ornaments, of the dense forests of Cayenne, where 

 it flowers at all seasons of the year, and where its trunk and branches are 

 not unfrequently concealed from view by an investing mass of the Spanish 

 longbeard (Tillandsia usneoldes L.). From Cayenne, the tree has been 

 introduced into the Island of St. Vincent, Dr. Hooker believes, by 

 Dr. Anderson. (Hot. Mag., June.) 



At page 241. of the current volume, Dr. Hamilton informs us that Pita 



