MEMECYLON TJMBELLATUM. (Nat. order Melastomaoere.) 



MEMECYLON. Linn. — GEN. CHAR. Calyx-tube hemispherical or campanulate, the limb entire or obtusely 4-lobed, rarely 5-lobed, plane 

 inside or radiately 8. winged. Petals 4 or rarely 5, ovate or orbicular. Stamens twice as many as petals, all equal and similar; anthers short, with 

 a thick connective, forming a conical spur at the base, the cells opening in longitudinal slits. Ovary entirely adnate to the calyx-tube, 1-celled, with 6 to 12 

 ovules, verticillate round a short central placenta ; style filiform, with a small stigma. Fruit a berry, crowned by the calyx-teeth or border, or by a cir- 

 cular scar only. Seeds solitary or rarely 2 or 3 ; testa somewhat ci'ustaceous ; cotyledons very much convolute or variously folded, usually enclosing the 

 radicle. Trees or shrubs glabrous. Leaves coriaceous, with 1 prominent midrib, and pinnate veins often scarcely perceptible or rarely more or less 

 3-nerved. Flowers usually small, in axillary clusters or cymes, blue or white. 



MEMECYLON UMBELLATTJM. (Burm.) A middling sized or small tree or large shrub, branches terete, leaves coriace- 

 ous deep green and shining, sessile to shortly petioled, very variable in shape, from ovate or cordato-ovate to oblong or elliptic, retuse 

 or obtuse or slightly acute at the apex, peuniveined with the veins generally very obscure, very variable in size, up to 6 inches long by 

 2 inches broad, peduncles axillary or from the old axils below the leaves incrassated at the apex and forming a kind of receptacle, or 

 sometimes wanting with the receptacle sessile, pedicels generally slender and 3-4 lines in length very numerous and each springing from 

 a small sessile scale-like bracteole, flowers bright blue forming dense round balls on the naked stems below the leaves, calyx lined with 

 a disk but without any radiating wing, stamens elongate, style as long as or much longer thau the stamens, berry nearly dry or only 

 slightly succulent, greenish, smooth nearly globular 3-4 lines in diameter crowned with the persistent calyx-limb, seed solitary globular, 

 cotyledons fleshy and very much contortuplicate. Burm. Fl. Ind. 87. M. ramiflorum, Lam, Diet. iv. 88 ; — WA. Prod. p. 319. M. 

 tinctorium, Wight Illust- tab- 93. M. sessile, Benth. ;—WA. Prod. p. 320. M. amplexicaule. WA. Prod. p. 320 (but probably not 

 Roxb..) M. cordatum, Lam. 



I have specimens of this from all parts of this presidency and from Ceylon, sometimes only as a shrub but on the mountains often a 

 tree of considerable size. The specimen figured is from a good sued tree growing in the Kodirikarnal shola on the Pulnies at 7000 feet elevation 

 and the same form occurs on the Nilgiris ; it has quite sissile stem-clamping cordate leaves, and the pedicels are sessile on tubercles in the old axils 

 without any peduncles ; the more shrubby varieties have generally petioled leaves and peduncled umbels, but amongst these 1 have forms with sessile 

 cordate leaves and the pedicels ivithout peduncles, so that there is no doubt about the propriety of uniting all the forms ; the wood is very hard and 

 close grained, and might answer as a substitute for box. In Ceylon the tree is called Kora-kahd, and the leaves are used in conjunction with the 

 wood of Morinda citrifolia and Cossalpinia sappan for producing a permanent red dye. 



Analysis. 



1. A flower bud. 



2. A flower just before the anthers expand, 2 petals removed. 



3. A flower after the fall of the 4 petals, showing the calyx and 8 stamens, 



4. A section of a flower, showing the insertion of the stamens and petals on the plane disk lining the calyx tube, and the 1 celled 



ovary. 



5. Cross section of au ovary. 



6. Au anther highly magnified. 



7. Highly magnified view of the insertion of the ovules on the basal placenta. (All drawn from fresh specimens.) 



Eig. A. Memecylon capitellatum (the short peduncled variety from Tinnevdly.) 



1. Portion of a branch showing a leaf and its venation, and a peduncle with flower buds. 



2. A flower bud. 



3. View of the calyx from above, showing the disk with 8 radiating wings. 



4. Vertical section of a flower. 



5. An anther. 



6. Transverse section of an ovary. 



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