JOHNSTON. — NEW PLANTS FROM VENEZUELAN ISLANDS, 691 
stamens unknown: carpels shortly 3-aristate, minutely puberulent, back 
convex, areolate; sides flat; base narrowed; seeds triangular-reniform, 
apex rounded, base acute, puberulent. — San Pedro, growing in the deep 
sand near the graveyard, Coche, Johnston, no. 18, Aug. 5, 1903, Allied 
to P. humifusa, A. St. Hil. : 
Casearia spiralis, n. sp. Tree 5 m. high: leaves alternate, ellipti- 
cal, 4 to 10 cm. long and 3 to 5 em. wide, membranous, punctate with 
pellucid dots and lines, crenate-serrate, indentations glanduliferous ; 
apex shortly acute; base obtuse or truncate; petiole glabrous, 1 cm. 
long; stipule lanceolate-setaceous, 4 mm. long ; inflorescence fasciculate, 
fascicles sessile or shortly pedunculate, compound, the branches bracteate 
at the base and at the nodes; bracts and bracteoles glabrous, as much as 
1.5 cm. long; calyx corolline, 5- to 7-lobed; lobes unequal, imbricated, 
the smaller outside, pellucid-punctate, glabrous; corolla none; stamens 
about 22, slightly perigynous; connective of anthers produced into a 
short acumen ; single, very short staminodia clothed with a whitish pubes- 
cence alternating with the stamens: ovary ovoid, pubescent; the three 
parietal placentas having many ovules; style short, thick ; stigma 3-lobed ; 
fruit unknown. — El Valle: river trail, Johnston, no. 283, Aug. 30, 
1903. 
The spiral arrangement of the sepals distinguishes this plant at once 
from all other Caseariae so far as can be determined from their descrip- 
tions. According to Warburg in Engler and Prantl’s Pflanzenfamilien, 
III. 6a, 13 this spiral condition would place this plant in the Erytho- 
spermeae, a group consisting of four African genera and a monotypic 
Chilian genus. ,Though the plants of these genera have no staminodia, 
some of them have scale-like appendages at the base of the inside sepals. 
The plant under consideration, Casearta spiralis, has none of these ap- 
pendages to the floral envelope, but has the staminodia characteristic of 
the genus Casearia, In such groups as these in which the calyx is 1m- 
bricated and varying in the number of its parts, from 4 to 6, the spiral 
or cyclic character would seem to be a less distinctive characteristic than 
the presence or absence of calyx-appendages or of staminodia. Thus the 
plant seems to be more nearly affiliated to the Caseareae than to any of 
the Erythospermeae, though showing affinities to” both. As to whether 
it is actually a Casearia may be a question. 
None of the species of Casearia, so far as described, show any marked 
irregularity of sepals or any definite spiral arrangement. Nor have any 
of them as many as seven lobes and very few as many as 22 stamens, 
which is the case in ©, spiralis. Nevertheless, the form of anthers, the 
