SAPINDACEiE. 211 



unlike that of a Hickory, is in its flowers and fruit plainly allied to the 

 Horscchestnut (from which it strikingly differs in its inflorescence, and its 

 alternate, pinnate leaves), commemorates the Baron Ungnad, ambassador 

 of the Emperor Rudolph II. to the Ottoman Porte, who, in the year 1576, 

 sent the seeds of the common Horscchestnut to Clusius at Vienna, and 

 thus first introduced that showy and now familiar tree into the West of 

 Europe. 



Geographical Distribution. The single known species belongs to 

 Texas, where it is common, and where specimens of the staminate plant 

 only were first gathered by the late Mr. Drummond. The fertile flowers 

 and fruit have only recently been made known by Messrs. Lindheimer, Wright, 

 &c. ; from whose seeds I have raised young plants in the Cambridge Botanic 

 Garden. 



Note. The lamented Endlicher (intelligence of whose untimely decease 

 has reached me while writing this article) characterized this genus from a 

 staminate specimen alone (from Drummond's collection), which is figured in 

 a work that few botanists have ever seen, on account of the purposely small 

 number of copies that were printed. The fertile flowers and the fruit, 

 although for several years known to us, have not until now been illus- 

 trated or described, except by Adolf Scheele, who has published a descrip- 

 tion, from Lindheimer's specimens, in the Linnaa during the past year. The 

 flowers which Endlicher happened to examine were pentapetalous, which is 

 not the more usual case, and he erroneously states the plant to form a large 

 tree, whereas it is commonly a slender shrub, of five or ten feet in height, or 

 at most a small tree. Misled by these discrepancies and by the difl^erences 

 of the two kinds of flowers, and, it would seem from his description, hap- 

 pening to possess tetrasepalous as well as tetrapetalous flowers (although 

 there are five sepals in all my Lindheimerian and other specimens), Mr. 

 Scheele has wrongly introduced a second species, under the name of U. 

 heterophylla. The leaflets vary from five, or even three on the earlier 

 leaves, to seven. 



Properties. The seeds are sweet-tasted, not unlike those of Walnuts, 

 but have emetic properties, according to Mr. Lindheimer. 



PLATE 178. Ungnadia speciosa, Endl. ; — the staminate plant ; a branch 

 in flower, of the natural size, from Texas, Lindhciinrr. 



1. Diagram of the flower. (The fourth sepal next the axis, the anterior 



petal wanting.) 



2. An enlarged petal, inside view, to show the conspicuous fimbriate 



crest. 



3. A magnified flower, with part of the calyx and petals cut away ; show- 



ing the unilateral disk, <tc. 



4. A portion of the same, with the disk and the receptacle vertically 



divided. 



