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Pomona College Journal of Economic Botanv 



and usually triparted; the flowering branchlets are glabrous, short, 2-4i cm. in 

 length, and carry 8-1 1 flowers alternately and not very regularly inserted round 

 the axis spreading and borne on a conspicuous pedicel 2.5-3 mm. long; the axes 

 of the branchlets and the pedicels are terete and glabrous ; the bracteoles at 

 the base of the pedicels are inconspicuous. The male flowers* in bud are 

 broadly ovoid, with a perfectly round top, and slightly narrow towards the base; 

 they are 5 mm. long and 1 mm. broad ; the calyx is shallowly cupular, deeply 

 parted into three deltoid acute lobes. Petals several times longer than the calyx, 

 thickish, fleshy, ovate, concave, valvate. Stamens six; filaments terete, thickish. 

 filiform, free from the base; anthers relatively very large, as long as the petals 

 elongate-rectangular; their cells parallel, introrse. deeply separated at the base; 

 rudimentary ovary conspicuous, elongate-conical, with three subulate stigmas, on 

 the whole these are a little shorter than the anthers. In each branchlet the male 

 flowers are far more numerous than the female. I have found only one female 

 flower on a branchlet, while several other branchlets had only male flowers. The 

 female flowers differ from the male resting on the same branchlet, in having the 

 corolla apparently not fully developed, and by being only twice as long as the 

 calyx, its divisions are deltoid, not connivent, but spreading with the stamens pro- 

 truding beyond the corolla, and about twice as long as that; otherwise the stamens 

 are identical with those of the male flowers ; apparently they are perfectly devel- 

 oped, and we may suppose, fertile. The ovary is conical, and has three subulate 

 stigmas, it is very similar to the ovary of the male flowers, only it is larger with 

 a broader base, three-locular, and with a very minute ovule in each cell, situated 

 in the lowest part of the ovary. 



Fruit usually 2-3 lobed, bi- or trieoecous, similar to a fruit on an Euphor- 

 biaccous plant, about 18 mm. broad (when dry), or it is monococcous and globose 

 (and then 9-10 mm. in diam.) when two of the carpels remain sterile; the fruit 

 is borne by a pedicel about 3 mm. long, and is suffulted by the deflexed petals, 

 upon which at the base still remains visible the hardened filaments of the stamens. 

 In the regularly developed three-lobed fruits, the remains of the stigmas are 

 apical and central, but when only one or two or the carpels develop, they may be 

 more or less shifted towards the base. The pericarp in the fresh fruit is fleshy, 

 bright orange or red; when dry it is wrinkled, the epicarp being thin, pellicular, 

 and adherent to the mesocarp ; this is apparently mucilaginous, and devoid of 

 fibrous strands; endocarp thinly woody, hard, and brittle, one-fourth of a millim. 

 thick; it forms a globose kernel, 8.5-11 mm. in diameter .with dull blackish even 

 surface marked only by a slightly raised straight crest on the axial side. Seed 

 free from the wall of the endocarp, globular, 7-8.5 mm. in diameter, at times 

 slightly longer than broad, attached laterally on the axial side; it has a dull even 

 surface, and is marked on each side by onh' two rather conspicuous arched 

 branchings of the raphe. Albumen homogeneous. Embryo basilar on the axial 

 side (Figure 116). 



*I have studied the flowers preserved in formol, kindly forwarded to me by 

 Mr. Ernest A. Bessey from Miami. 



