ON SOUTH-AMEEICAN APOCYNACE^. 27 



lets stout and fistulous, all yielding an abundant milky juice ; they liave alternate imbri- 

 cated leaves, generally large, upon petioles articulated at the base, which soon fall off 

 from the branchlets, leaving them closely studded with cicatrices ; this disposition to 

 disjunction of the parts is so marked, that we seldom find an entire specimen in herbaria. 

 The inflorescence is terminal upon a long peduncle, having several alternate branchlets, 

 dichotomously divided, and bearing many handsome pediceUated flowers, which are 

 generally scarlet or rose-coloured ; the tube of the corolla is slender ; the segments, nearly 

 its length, are spathulately and dextrorsely convoluted in aestivation. The fruit consists 

 of 2 horizontally divaricated follicles nearly the shape and size of the pods of the com- 

 mon broad bean, and they open by a ventral suture, the margins of which are intro- 

 flexed to form a single lamellar plate, which bears on both sides many imbricated 

 seeds ; these are oblong, flat, thickened, and truncated at one end into an embryoniferous 

 scutcheon, and expanded at the opposite extremity into a long coriaceous lacerated 

 wing, which points to the base of the follicle : they are furnished in the middle of the 

 scutcheon on one face with a hilum, by which it is peltately attached to the placental 

 lamina in 2 or 3 closely imbricated rows, without the intervention of any funicles. A 

 thin corneous albumen fills the cell of each scutcheon, enclosing a heterotropous 

 embryo, of 2 foliaceous cotyledons and a terete radicle many times shorter, which points 

 to the summit of the follicle. 



Some of the species furnish a large, solid, durable timber ; the " sucuuba " for instance, 

 from the Amazons, is of a reddish-brown colour, hard and close-grained, and used in 

 shipbuilding, the timber sometimes 60 feet long and 4 feet in diameter ; others give a 

 smaller timber, useful for cabinet work. 



Cameraeia. 



A genus established by Plumier in 1703, and adopted by Linnaeus 50 years afterwards. 

 It must not be confounded with the Cameraria of Aublet, now belonging to Malmetia. 

 Although very different from it, this is nearly allied to Plvmeria^ It consists of only 2 

 species, both natives of the West Indies, one of which is a taU tree with many dichotomous 

 branches, bearing opposite leaves and yielding a milky juice ; the leaves are smallish, 

 horizontally spreading, ovate-oblong, acuminated, entire, with numerous extremely close 

 horizontally parallel nerves, and petiolated. It has axillary racemes on a peduncle 4 in. 

 long, dichotomously branched above, bearing few pubescent fl^owers on long pedicels : the 

 tube of the corolla is slender ; its segments, somewhat longer than it, are oblong acute 

 with dextrorse convolution: follicles 2, horizontally divaricated, oblong and broadly 

 auriculated at the base ; they open by a ventral suture, the margins of which are intro- 

 flexed and placentiferous, as in Fltmeria, and in like manner bearing several peltate 

 seeds closely attached imbricately in a single series, winged at one extremity, which 

 points to the summit of the funicle, contrary to the direction in Plumeria. 



I cannot see where Miiller (in Linn. xxx. 401) confounded Cameraria with Shytanthus 

 hancormcefoUa, as Bentham and Hooker imply (Gen. ii. 701) ; this mistake is repeated in 



page 704, under Shytanthus. 



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