362 PHANEROGAMIA. 



1. Brackenridgea nitida, Sp. Nov. (Tab. 42.) 



B. glaberrima ; foliis oblongis lanceolatisve nitidis; pedicellis in um- 

 bellas sessiles axillaris et terminates multifloras fasciculatis cum rhachi 

 brevissima articulatis ; floribus flavidis ; fitamentis brevissimis. 



Hab. Sandalwood Bay, Vanua-levu, one of the Feejee Islands. 



A shrub, or small tree, 15 or 20 feet high, entirely glabrous through- 

 out; the bark of the branchlets mostly wrinkled or corrugated. 

 Leaves alternate, varying from oblong to lanceolate, 3 to 6 inches long 

 and one or two wide ; the broader ones more or less obtuse ; the nar- 

 rower commonly acute at both ends, on very short and thickened 

 petioles (the bark of which becomes corrugated like that of the 

 branchlets), coriaceous, entire, very smooth and shining, especially 

 above, finely and very copiously feather-veined, the veins obliquely 

 transverse, except one or two usually of the lower ones on each side, 

 which are procurrent within the margin and parallel to it, and conti- 

 nued to the apex of the leaf, inosculating with the ascending extre- 

 mities of the finer transverse veins. Stipules small, subulate-seta- 

 ceous, and with two lateral cusps about the middle, their bases united 

 within the petiole, as in the Gomphice of the Old World, caducous. 

 Pedicels aggregated in sessile and many-flowered umbels or fascicles, in 

 the axils of the leaves, or sometimes terminal on very short spurs or tuber- 

 cular bases, which are often clustered, and clothed with minute and 

 scarious, deciduous scales : the pedicels are 6 or 8 lines long, at least 

 in fruit, articulated at their insertion, filiform. Calyx of 5 broadly 

 oval and chartaceo-membranaceous sepals, imbricated in aestivation, 

 yellowish, spreading, persistent in fruit. Petals 5, oval-obovate, 

 apparently yellow, about as long as the calyx, hypogynous, imbricated 

 in aestivation, deciduous. Stamens 10, hypogynous, inserted on the 

 summit of a short and thick gynobase, outside of a narrow disk or 

 margin which surrounds the base of the ovary : filaments very short, 

 persistent: anthers articulated with the filament, innate, linear- 

 oblong, smooth (not wrinkled), two-celled, with a rather broad con- 

 nective, the cells opening longitudinally for their whole length at the 

 margins. Pollen-grains spherical, simple. Ovary five-parted on the 



