JMelastoma.] Melastomace<z. 199 



campanulate, faintly ribbed, usually perfectly glabrous, occa- 

 sionally with scattered simple or stellate bristly hairs, segm. 

 narrowly triangular, not half length of tube, ciliate, tipped 

 with a bristle or large stellate hair, intermediate teeth large ; 

 pet. 5, rounded, ciliate ; anth. attenuate ; ov. with a tuft of 

 long hairs on summit. 



Moist low country and extending up to 5000 ft.; common. Fl. all the 

 year ; pale purplish-pink, often nearly or quite white. 



Also in South India. 



O. fiolycephala, Naud., is based on C. P. 507 in Hb. Kew, and is 

 maintained by Cogniaux (1. c. 314). I fail to see any difference from 

 ordinary O. octa?tdra beyond the presence of a few stellate hairs on the 

 cal.-tube. 



It is difficult to understand why Linnaeus should have given the name 

 octandra to this 10-stamened plant; Don's later one is very much more 

 appropriate. 



2. MELASTOIVIA, L. 



A large shrub with the young shoots bristly-hairy, 1. opp., 

 fl. large in terminal cymes ; cal.-tube adnate to base of ov. 

 and prolonged beyond it, covered with simple scaly hairs, 

 segm. 5, deciduous with minute bristle-pointed teeth between 

 them ; pet. 5 ; stam. 10, unequal, those opp. cal.-segm. with 

 purple anth. and the connective much produced below and 

 ending in two blunt projections, those opp. pet. with yellow 

 anth. and the connective very short with 2 small projecting 

 lobes ; ov. ^-inferior, 5-celled with very numerous ovules on 

 large axile placentas, fruit small, irregularly dehiscent, with 

 very numerous seeds ; seed small, kidney-shaped, embryo 

 curved, no endosperm. — Sp. 37 (Cogniaux) ; 6 in Fl. B. Ind. 



IK. malabathricum,t L. Sp. Plant. 390 (1753). Maha- 

 bowitiya, S. 



Herm. Mus. 10. Burm. 'Ihes. 155. Fl. Zeyl. n. 171. Moon Cat. 35. 

 Thw. Enum. 106. Cogn. Mon. 349 C. P. 1574. 



Fl. B. Ind. ii. 523. Wight, 111. t. 95. 



A much-branched bush, with cylindrical branchlets at first 

 covered with red bristly forward-pointing hairs, afterwards 

 with thin yellowish fibrillose bark ; 1. 2^-6 in., lanceolate, 



* From //fX«c, black, and (tto/iu, mouth, from the staining of the lips, 

 which results from eating the fruit. The name first given by Burman, 

 who took it from Hermann, who says the plant was called ' Bocca preto' 

 by the Portuguese for this reason. 



t Linmeus seems to have thought this to be the source of the folia 

 malabathri, atone time much used as a medicine in Europe. This name 

 of the old pharmacists was a corruption of the Indian one, Tamalapattra, 

 and the leaves really those of Cinnamomum Tamala, trees. 



