578 PHANEROGAMIA 



Var. (3. Vitiensis : foliis in sicco flavescentibus ; inflorescentia glabriore ; 

 pedicellis paullo brevioribm. 



Hab. Samoan or Navigators' Islands (var. a.) ; in the mountains of 

 Tutuila. (3. Feejee Islands; on Ovolau, at an elevation of about 

 1,000 feet. 



As well as can be judged from the incomplete specimens, these two 

 forms appear to belong to the same species. The Samoan plant has 

 the leaves greenish when dry, without any trace of yellow ; and the 

 inflorescence shows a minute and scurfy, ferrugineous pubescence, 

 which is soon deciduous ; its pedicels are 2 or 3 lines long. The 

 Feejee specimen has a yellowish hue in the foliage; and the inflores- 

 cence (in fruit) shows scarcely a trace of the ferrugineous scurf. 

 Otherwise no difference is discernible : but we have no flowers or buds 

 of the latter, to compare with the unexpanded flower-buds of the 

 former. The floral characters given, therefore, belong only to the 

 Samoan plant. — A shrub or small tree, the var. (3. said to be 20 feet 

 high 5 the branches terete and nodose. Leaves glabrous, oval or oblong, 

 acutish at both ends, or the base often obtuse, or even rounded, char- 

 taceous in texture, dull, 4 or 5 inches long, li to 2£ wide, three-ribbed 

 from the base, besides an intramarginal nerve on each side, which is 

 often so conspicuous as to make the leaves five-ribbed; the ribs con- 

 nected by rather prominent, transverse veins, from which proceed less 

 evident reticulated veinlets. Petioles elongated (from 12 to 18 lines 

 long), slender. Cyme compound, corymbose, loosely many-flowered, 

 terminal, trichotomous ; its branches angular, nodose. Bracts cadu- 

 cous. Pedicels slender. Flower-buds globular, or obovoid-globose ; 

 those by no •means full grown 2 lines in diameter, closed, the fleshy 

 calyx showing no trace of lobes. But in specimens past anthesis the 

 calyx is found to be open, and campanulate in form, produced con- 

 spicuously beyond the ovary, with the truncate margin irregularly 

 cleft into 9 to 20 short teeth. Petals 5, short and broad in the bud, 

 convolute in aestivation, said to be u white, and as long as the calyx," 

 in Dr. Pickering's notes. Stamens 10; the filaments very short 

 in the undeveloped flower-buds : anthers dolabriform, notched at the 

 base, where the salient connective is produced into a strong gibltosity. 

 Style in the bud columnar, as long as the calyx, terminated with the 

 depressed-capitate and entire stigma of the genus : after anthesis it 

 becomes much exserted, filiform, and half an inch long. Ovary five- 



