DILLENIACEiE. 19 



Stems a foot high from a creeping base, erect or ascending, slender, 

 cinerous-puberulent, soon glabrous. Leaves linear and oblong-linear, 

 an inch or an inch and a half in length, obtuse, mucronate, the revo- 

 lute margins sparingly and obsoletely callose-denticulate above the 

 middle, veinless; the midrib conspicuous; the upper surface glabrous; 

 the lower, like the short petioles and young branchlets, canescent with 

 a soft silky pubescence. Flowers solitary and subsessile at the extre- 

 mity of short leafy branchlets, small. Sepals 3 lines long, imbri- 

 cated in aestivation, persistent, a thickish carinate axis silky-pubescent 

 externally, and produced at the apex into a subulate or subaristate 

 acumination, the rest membranaceous and partly petaloid, yellowish. 

 Petals 5, imbricated in aestivation, oval, yellow, rather shorter than 

 the calyx, early deciduous. Stamens 10, about as long as the petals, 

 persistent, equal in length, and symmetrically arranged. Filaments 

 shorter than the anthers, flat. Anthers elongated-oblong, emarginate 

 at the apex ; the cells somewhat separated by the rather broad and 

 flat connective, opening longitudinally by a slightly introrse line. Ova- 

 ries 2, distinct, erect, somewhat obcompressed, conical, tapering regu- 

 larly into a short, subulate, and very acute style : stigma terminal, 

 simple, very minute. Ovule solitary, ascending from the base of the 

 ventral suture, on a very short funiculus, obovoid, anatropous. Fruit 

 of 2 thin and membranaceous follicles, shorter than the persistent 

 calyx, pointed with the persistent style, dehiscent by the ventral 

 suture, one-seeded. Seed filling the lower part of the follicle, ovoid, 

 with a smooth testa, and with a minute, thin, and scarious, orbicular 

 arillus, or rather a caruncle, which is apparently attached to the 

 micropyle. 



I am not aware that anything has appeared respecting this plant 

 since it was characterized by DeCandolle, thirty-five years ago, from 

 specimens he examined in the Lambertian herbarium. I have there- 

 fore confirmed and completed the character (which was left in some 

 respects imperfect by DeCandolle), from the specimens collected in the 

 Exploring Expedition. This was the more necessary since the altera- 

 tions made by Endlicher (I know not whether from actual materials), 

 viz., "capsulse coriaceaa," and "arillo membranaceo," do not accord 

 with the plant before me. For the carpels are membranaceous, as 

 said by DeCandolle, and the arillus, if such it be, is almost obsolete. 



