President’s Address Ixxxv 
however, is bright crimson on P. Thunbergii, the so-called true yellow- 
wood, and dark blue on P. elongatus, the Outeniqua yellow-wood, 
looking like the fruits of the yew in the former and like plums in the 
second case, for even the bloom is there, rendering them very tempting, 
which does not deceive, for they are sweet and pleasant to eat. 
A few plants develop a peculiar growth round their seeds, called an 
arillus. I have already alluded to the European yew, where the arillus 
is pulpy and serves the same purpose as the pulp of berries. We have 
an instance of fruits with a pulpy arillus in our wild passion flower, 
which resembles the cultivated grenadilla in this respect. In the 
following cases the arillus is firm and rich in oil like the endosperm of 
most palm seeds, 
Putterlickia pyracantha and P. acuminata, shrubs common in our 
neighbourhood, bear triangular capsules, which remain closed in wet 
weather, but open when it is dry. The arillus covers the seeds almost 
entirely, and being a bright orange colour, it then forms a very con- 
spicuous object. The same is the case with the spherical capsules of 
Kiggelaria Africana, which tree is then teeming with birds. In Schotia 
latifolia (see Fig. 7) the large seeds are brown, and the cup-like arillus is 
bright orange, while a still greater contrast of colours is shown by the 
seeds of Afzelia Cuanzensis, a tree in the region of the Zambesi. The 
pods are six inches long and contain about ten or more seeds, black and 
shining like ebony, but surrounded at the base by a bright orange, cup- 
like arillus. Similar in colour are the seeds of Stérelitzia augusta, but 
the oily arillus is fimbriated (see Fig. 8). The same contrast of colours 
is to be seen on two species of Commiphora from Damaraland (C. glau- 
cescens and C’. saxicola), where, however, the cup is not an arillus, but 
a portion of the mesocarp supporting the black shining endocarp. The 
orange-yellow, fleshy covering of the bony seeds of Hncephelartos is also 
an arillus-like organ. In these cases the seeds are mostly too large to 
be swallowed, but adhering very firmly to the arillus, they are carried 
away with the latter, when the birds take their food to a convenient 
place, where they can pick it to pieces. 
In several cases it has been observed that birds do not retain the 
seeds after having eaten the fruit, but reject them some time afterwards. 
Mr. Chalwin, from the Municipal Gardens, informs me that he has 
noticed such rejected seeds from Asparagus, Cassine Capensis, Dovyalis 
rhamnoides, Grumilea cymosa, and Royena lucida. 
A number of plants, independent of wind and animals, take the dis- 
tribution of seeds, so to say, into their own hands, and scatter them by 
mechanical force. Impatiens Capensis has, like its European sister, the 
well-known J. noli me tangere, soft capsules which, when ripe, burst open 
on the slightest touch, and throw the seeds to a distance of several feet, 
