134 PHANEROGAMIA. 



ScJiiedea ligustrina, Cham. & Schlecbt. in Linnaea, 1, p. 46 ; Fenzl, in Endl. Atakt. 



Bot. t. 14, & Add. WieD. Mus. 2, p. 273. 

 Portulacea, Hook. & Am. Bot. Beech. Voy. p. 188. 



Hab. Oabu, Sandwich Islands; common on arid plains of the 

 Kaala Mountains, in the district of Waianae. 



Plant wholly glabrous in every part, in our specimens only a foot 

 high (sometimes 3 feet high), shrubby, except the flowering shoots, 

 upright, dichotomously much branched ; the older stems 2 lines in 

 diameter, covered with gray bark ; the branches rather strict, with 

 tumid internodes • the older ones nearly terete, those of the season 

 four-angled and more or less flattened. Leaves all opposite and con- 

 nate at the insertion, in the manner of the order, thickish, from an 

 inch to 2 inches long, varying from obversely lanceolate or oblong- 

 spatulate to narrowly lanceolate, and from 3 to 1£ lines in w T idth, 

 broadest above the middle, thence gradually narrowed to the base, but 

 sessile, tipped with a short and abrupt or mucronate point, one-nerved, 

 or very obscurely triplinerved (the lateral nerves and minute veins 

 obsolete or hidden), but not at all three-nerved; the margins thickish, 

 often slightly revolute. Sometimes a few smaller leaves are fascicled 

 in the axils, on undeveloped branches. Inflorescence a narrow and 

 strict interrupted thyrsus, or contracted panicle, from 2 to 4 inches long, 

 terminating the branches, composed of four or five pairs of subsessile 

 or short-peduncled and many-flowered., cy mules ; the lower pairs from 

 half an inch to an inch apart, the upper ones approximate. Bracts 

 very small, ovate or subulate, or only the lower pair foliaceous. Pedi- 

 cels U to 6 lines long, capillary, thickened at the apex. Flowers 

 small; the sepals of the five-parted (or occasionally 4-6-parted) calyx 

 only a line or a line and a half long, ovate or oblong, very obtuse, 

 somewhat fleshy, with scarious margins, obsoletely three-nerved. 

 Corolla none. Staminodia (in place of the first series of stamens) 

 petaloid, inserted into the base of the calyx opposite the sepals, more 

 or less shorter than they are, persistent, narrowly linear, white, more 

 or less thickened at the base, where they are hollowed into a concavity 

 inside, the apex deeply two-cleft; the slender lobes subulate. Fertile 

 stamens 10, unequal, five of them inserted into the base of the calyx 

 alternate with its divisions, and five opposite the divisions and inside 

 of the staminodia, with which the base of their filaments is coherent : 

 in the tetramerous flowers the stamens are 8, in the hexamerous, 12. 



