MELIACE^E. 245 



an inch or less in length, chartaceous in texture, pinnately veined 

 with 6 or 7 pairs of rather prominent primary veins, connected by 

 minute, reticulated veinlets, obscurely and minutely 'punctate with pel- 

 lucid dots: they are from 3 to 6 inches long and \\ to 3 inches wide. 

 Stipules apparently none ; what were taken for linear-lanceolate and 

 villous deciduous stipules being apparently nascent leaves or perulae. 

 Peduncles solitary in the axils of the upper leaves, shorter than they, 

 naked below, many-flowered at the summit ; the floioers in a compound 

 cyme; its branches puberulent, with ovate-subulate bracts and bract- 

 lets. Calyx 4-7 -cleft below the middle, free, puberulent, persistent; 

 the lobes triangular-ovate, lightly imbricated in cestivation. Petals as 

 many as the lobes of the calyx and alternate with them, hypogynous, 

 ligulate-oblong, of a thickish texture, clothed with a fine and close 

 silky pubescence on both sides, lightly imbricated in cestivation, recurved- 

 spreading from an erect base in anthesis, twice or thrice the length of 

 the calyx, 2 or 3 lines long, deciduous. Stamens 12 to 20, or perhaps 

 21, usually 12 in tetramerous flowers, and about 15 in pentamerous 

 flowers, therefore normally thrice the number of the petals, more or 

 less unequal in length, hypogynous, free from the petals, shorter and 

 less deciduous than they : filaments flat, linear, glabrous towards the 

 base, where they are monadelphous, and also coherent with the whole 

 exterior face of an annular, cup-shaped, and fleshy, hypogynous dish, 

 above distinct, but closely approximate in a single series, very hirsute 

 towards the summit; the long and dense beard mostly borne on the 

 inner face : anthers oval, emarginate at both ends, tioo-celled, fixed by 

 the sinus at their base to the narrowed apex of the filament, introrse ; 

 the cells opening longitudinally for their whole length. Disk sur- 

 rounding the ovary and equalling it in length, rather thin, minutely 

 pubescent inside. Ovary %-4-celled, free, ovoid, densely hirsute-pubes- 

 cent, closely sessile within the disk ; the cells small in proportion to 

 the thick and fleshy parietes. Style columnar, rather thick, as long 

 as the stamens, pubescent below : stigma peltate or disk-shaped, thick, 

 undivided, the summit obscurely S-A-radiate. Ovules 2 in each cell, 

 attached to the inner angle near the base, ascending, collateral, between 

 orilvotropous and amphitropous, the micropyle superior. The ripe fruit 

 is unknown : the young state, however, manifestly indicates it as a 

 fleshy or pulpy, spherical berry, of small size, stipate by the persistent 

 calyx, with small cells, some, or perhaps all but one, of which (and a 

 single seed ?) may be suppressed in ripening. 



62 



