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Pomona College Journal of Economic Botany 



is thinly tomentose, and densely covered with stiff, very fine, hlack spiculae, 

 mostly deflexed. The panicle is 10-15 cm. long, formed by several simple flower- 

 ing branchlets, and borne on a curved peduncular part, as long or longer ; this 

 is 8-10 mm. thick, densely hispid, or covered by spiculiform bristles ; is furnished 

 above, immediately below the panicle, with a loosely sheathing cyathiform bract, 

 of which the irregularly truncate mouth is produced into 2-3 irregular, broad- 

 based, subulate teeth. The flowering branchlets are all almost of the same 

 length, 8-12 mm. long; at first fastigiate; later, when they are loaded with 

 fruits, spreading; they are filiform, 1.5-2 mm. in diameter at the base, thick- 

 ening to 3 mm. when bearing fruit, subulate at the apex, slightly sinuous, 

 terete, covered at first by a dense, rusty-furfuraceous, pulverulent indumen- 

 tum, formed by small papillae which become partially deciduous by age. 

 During the flowering time the axial part of the branchlets is entirely hidden 

 by the flowers, which are very closely packed together. 



The male flowers are more numerous than the female, have very incon- 

 spicuously hyaline bracts at their bases, are superficially inserted on the 

 branchlets, and solitary on each pulvinule; they are rendered very unsym- 

 metrically three-gonous by mutual pressure, 4 mm. long and about as large; 

 the calyx is small, membranous, and has three narrow acute teeth ; the corolla 

 is much longer than the calyx, fleshy, divided almost to the base into three 

 valvate, deltoid, acute, flat segments; stamens six, filaments short, anthers 

 linear, obtuse at both ends; rudiment of an ovary inconspicuous, punctiform. 



Female flowers scattered among the male flowers; apparently each female 

 flower is accompanied by two male flowers, but the glomerules are not regular ; 

 at the time that the male flowers are about to open, the female flowers are 2.5-3 

 mm. long, and apparently are ready to be fertilized; they are cylindraceous, 

 probably thinly fleshy when fresh, membranous and of a lighter color than the 

 males in the dry herbarium specimens ; the corolla is about three times as long 

 as the calyx, and thicker than this, tubular, slightly campanulate, obsoletely 

 striately-veined (when dry), three-toothed, the teeth broadly triangular, 

 acute, and connivent; ovary clavate-oblong, rounded above, and surmounted 

 by a conspicuous, quite sessile, convex suborbicular papillose stigma; the corolla 

 is accrescent after the fertilization of the ovary, and becomes broadly cam- 

 panulate, 3 mm. high, 5 mm. broad, truncate and very obsoletely three-den- 

 ticulate at the mouth, but in time becomes explanate under the mature fruit; 

 it is then 7 mm. in diameter, more or less split into three strongly striately- 

 veined lobes. 



Fruit, globose, slightly depressed, 11-12 mm. in diameter, and about 2 mm. 

 less in height, with the papilliform remains of the stigma in the center of the 

 slightly depressed apex; in the dry condition it is yellowish and more or less 

 sharply, longitudinally striate; the pericarp on the whole is very thin; the 

 epicarp very thinly pellicular and adherent to the mesocarp ; the mesocarp is 

 very scanty, possibly slightly fleshy when fresh, it has only a layer of unequal 

 fine fibres, which give a finely striate appearance to the dry fruit. The 

 putamen has a smooth black surface and three pores placed a little above the 



