582 PHANEKOGAMIA. 



rically, in its tetramerous flowers, calcarate anthers, and minute 

 stigma. 



1. Asteonidium parviflorum, Sp. Nov. (Tab. 72.) 



Hab. Ovolau and Ambau, Feejee Islands: along the banks of 

 streams. 



A small tree, about 20 feet high, glabrous, or the nascent parts 

 minutely ferrugineous-pubescent. Branches terete; the ultimate 

 branchlets somewhat angled. Leaves oblong or elliptical, opposite, 

 obtuse or acutish at both ends, or the uppermost slightly and bluntly 

 acuminate, 3 or 4 inches long, from an inch to 2 inches wide, char- 

 taceous in texture, drying of a fuscous hue, smooth, three-ribbed, and 

 with a pair of submarginal nerves ; the ribs connected by transverse 

 veins, which are rather conspicuous underneath, and reticulated with 

 minute veinlets. Petioles from half an inch to an inch long. Cyme 

 terminal, decompound, paniculate-corymbose, trichotomous ; the rami- 

 fications compressed-angular, subtended by small foliaceous bracts, 

 which are early deciduous; the ultimate ramifications 3-7-flowered 

 at the summit, Floivers small (a line and a half long), very nume- 

 rous, crowded, on pedicels of a line or less in length. Calyx naked, 

 between hemispherical and campanidate ; the free portion or limb 

 almost as long as the proper tube, the margin repandly four-toothed 

 (the teeth broad and obtuse), or irregularly Q-S-toothed, nearly in the 

 manner of Astronia confertiflora, &c. Petals 4, small (white*?), con- 

 volute in aestivation, probably caducous. Stamens 8, equal and 

 similar, inserted on the calyx at its junction with the summit of the 

 ovary : filaments flattened and dilated, subulate, the apex inflexed in 

 aestivation in the manner of the order, about the length of the limb 

 of the calyx : anthers oblong-linear, as long as the filament ; the con- 

 nective narrow, but fleshy, produced downwardly into a basal spur of 

 half the length of the filament ; its anterior face occupied bv the 

 two narrowly linear and opposite anther-cells, which are extended 

 and curved a little round the obtuse apex, each dehiscent by a lon- 

 gitudinal line from top to bottom. Style filiform, terminated by a 

 small and simple (not in the least capitellate or dilated) stigma. 

 Ovary 3-4-celled, depressed-globose, entirely adnate to the tube of the 

 calyx. Placentas rising from the very base of the celh, wholly distinct 



