. NOTES ON THE FLORA OF SINGAPORE. 85 



Planch with its deep claret coloured flowers and must 1 

 think be a distinct species, but 1 cannot find that it has 

 been described anywhere. 



Gonystylas Maingayi Hook, fil. This abnormal and puzzling 

 tree has been classed among' the ThymeUacece y and also 

 among the Tiliacece, and finally given an order all to itself 

 Gonystylacece. It is rather incompletely described in the 

 Flora of British India, and a more complete account of it 

 would not be out of place. It is a tree of no great size 

 with smooth dark-coloured bark. Leaves oblong lance- 

 olate acute coriaceous deep green with numerous close 

 veins and smaller reticulated ones quite glabrous except 

 for some appressed hairs along the midrib on the back, 

 and a pubescent petiole. The blade is about six inches 

 long and 2± inches wide, the petiole thick half an inch 

 long. The flowers are in lax axillary and terminal pani- 

 cles about six inches in length and tomentose, they are 

 arranged in threes on short thick tomentose peduncles. 

 The pedicels are J inch long. The flowers J inch across 

 green all pubescent. The sepals are five ovate triangular 

 blunt valvate very thick pubescent outside and covered 

 with thick long hairs inside. There are no petals but a 

 close ring of setaceous processes as long as the stamens 

 rises from the base of the petals. The stamens are very 

 short, filaments very short and slender, anthers oblong 

 basifixed. The pistil globose hairy, the style very slender 

 and filiform. The fruit is oblong elliptic two inches long 

 and one inch through, dark brown and woody pitted all 

 over, when ripe splitting into two or three lobes more 

 than |- inch thick. Seeds two elliptic oblong nearly as 

 long as the fruit and half an inch thick light brown. 



It occurs in Singapore in the Garden Jungle, Bukit Mandai, 

 Bukit Timah. Malacca at Brisu. Penang at Government 

 Hill, and Balik Pulau. Perak at Tapa, Larut. 



The fruit in herbarium specimens often splits long before it 

 is ripe, hence the error in the Flora of British India where 

 it is stated that the fruit is flat and semicircular. The 

 Brisu and Bukit Timah specimens have very small narrow 



