578 PHANEROGAMIA. 



Hab. Samoan or Navigators' Islands ; on the mountains of Tutuila, 

 at the altitude of 2,500 feet. 



The specimens only bear mature and dehiscent fruit. They are 

 said to belong to a shrub, of 6 or 10 feet in height. The slender 

 branchlets and petioles are hirsute-pubescent, as are the main peduncles, 

 and there are traces of a slight hairiness on the midrib of the leaflets 

 underneath. The stipules have fallen. Leaves all pinnately com- 

 pound, and 5-7-foliolate or sometimes trifoliolate ; the rhachis terete 

 below, but somewhat margined between the upper pairs of leaflets. 

 Leaflets lanceolate, 2 or 3 inches long, 5 to 9 lines wide, more or less 

 acuminate, obsoletely serrate, sessile, or the terminal one somewhat 

 petiolulate, glabrous, dotted underneath, chartaceous in texture, rather 

 dull. Peduncles terminal, short, usually bearing the virgate racemes 

 in threes, sometimes in fives. These in fruit are 2 or 3 inches long, 

 slender but dense, and spreading, puberulent. Pedicels crowded and 

 fascicled, a line long. The vestiges of the flower show a four-parted 

 calyx, deciduous from the fruit, and 8 slender glands of the disk. 

 Petals and stamens not seen. Capsule glabrous or nearly so, ovoid, a 

 line and a half long, apiculate with 2 very short styles (of barely half 

 a line in length), septicidal; the valves at length falling away from 

 the persistent axis, which is dilated above into a thin lanceolate 

 appendage. Seeds oblong, several in each cell, comose at each end. 



8. GEISSOIS, Labill. 



Char, auctus. Calyx profunde quadripartitus, demum deciduus, cpsti- 

 vatione valvatus. Corolla nulla. Stamina 10-15 [vel 16 ?), basi 

 disci hypogyni inserta: filamenta filiformia, elongata: anthers 

 didymce, biloculares, locidis longitudinal iter dehiscent ibus. Ovarium 

 liberum, conoideo-oblongum, biloculare: ovula plurima, biseriata, in 

 placentis bipartitis sursum imbricata, anatropa. Styli 2, filiformes, 

 basi connati, decidui: stigmata simplicia terminalia. Capsula 

 lineari-oblonga, coriacea, bilocidaris, ab apice septicide bivalvis. 

 Semina indefinita, complanata, adscendentia, imbricata; testa mem- 

 branacea reticulata sursum alata. Embryo in axi albuminis carnosi 

 rectus, ejusdem fere longitudine ; cotyledonibus ovalibus subfoliaceis ; 



