Cvfdm. PENTANDRIA MOftOGYNlA. 33t 



Panicles short, terminal and lateral, roundish ; ramifications alter- 

 nate, diverging, and once or more dichotomous. — Flowers numerous, 

 small, white. — Bractes minute) villous. — Calyx villous, campanulate, 

 leathery ; mouth unequally dentate, — Carol sliort, campauulate ; seg- 

 ments live, linear-oblong. — Filaments as long as the segments of 

 the corol, and inserted immediately under their fissures. Anthers 

 incumbent. — Germ ovate, four-celled ; with oue ovulum in each at- 

 tached to the upper end of the axis. Style short. Stigma four-clett; 

 segments four-cieft, long, rugose, and recurvate- — Drupe oblate-sphe- 

 riodal, about an inch or an inch and a quarter in diameter, 

 smooth, when ripe yellow. Pulp in large quantity, soft, clear, 

 arid very clatnmy ; (the natives eat it freely,) one-ceiled. Nut near- 

 ly circular, laterally compressed, rugose on the outside, with a ca- 

 vity at each end, the lower one deeper than the other, exceedingly 

 liaid, four-celled, though rarely all fertile. — Seed solitary, ovate-ob- 

 lotig. Integfiment single, white, soft and oily. Plumula very small* 

 Radicle conic, superior. 



Mr. Henry Colebrooke, who is intimately acquainted with Hin- 

 doo literature, informs me that the writers on Indian Materia me- 

 dica notice two sorts of Sepistan. The first as large as a prune 1 , 

 with its nut immersed in mucilaginous pulp, and separable from it. 

 The second smaller, with its nut adhering to the pulp (as described 

 by our writers on Materia rnedica in Europe), but with less 

 mucilage, and sweeter than the large one. The rest of the descrip- 

 tions, he observes, is common to both kinds, viz. The leaf round, 

 the fruit growing in clusters, when ripe yellow, but afterwards turn-' 

 jng black, &c. 



The first, or large sort, is no doubt, the fruit of the tree just nowr 

 described ; and the small sort that of Cordia Myxa, which has hi- 

 therto, I believe, been considered in Europe, as the only tree which 

 produces this drug ; but from the information furnished by Mr. Cole- 

 brooke we have reason to believe there are two sorts used in medi- 

 cine by the Asiatics, which are the produce of two trees of the same 



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