MISCELLANEOUS PLANTS 



209 



by Hemsley in Chall. Bot., IV., 278), and Gumprecht, employing the 

 same reference in page 420 of his paper, observes that Tonning 

 referred the Scandinavian " Buesteen " to Piscidia erythrina. This 

 leguminous tree, as shown below, is not at all likely to have furnished 

 the " Bent-stone " seeds of the Scandinavian beach-drift; and it is 

 noteworthy that Sernander, the most recent writer on this subject, 

 who was doubtless guided by Lindman, excludes it from his list of 

 Tonning' s identifications. 



Piscidia erythrina, L., is a West Indian tree, the seeds of which, 

 as described in Grisebach's work, are one-third of an inch long, 

 black, sub-compressed, and transversely oblong. They evidently 

 would not be described as " Bent-stones " or " Curved- stones " ; 

 and it is very unlikely that they possess buoyancy. Though the 

 tree is common in the West Indies, its seeds have never been 

 recorded from the beach-drift. 



There is, however, abundant evidence to show that the seeds of 

 littoral species of Erythrina, to which the name of Bent-stone would 

 apply, are dispersed by currents in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, 

 and I have dealt at length with the matter in my book on Plant 

 Dispersal (pp. 141, 435, 437-8, 489, 577). In those regions they 

 figure in stranded beach-drift and in the floating drift of rivers. In 

 the West Indies the species with buoyant seeds do not seem common 

 enough to enable them to figure in the beach-drift. But on the 

 South American mainland, as illustrated in the case of the estuaries 

 and beaches of Ecuador (Ibid., p. 489), Erythrina seeds are abundant 

 in floating and stranded drift, and may be observed miles out at sea 

 off the river mouths. A systematic inquiry into the buoyancy of 

 the seeds of the New World species of the genus is needed. I experi- 

 mented on those of Erythrina velutina and E. corallodendron, neither 

 of which are littoral species. In the first case most of the seeds have 

 buoyant kernels, two-thirds floating in fresh-water and nine-tenths 

 in sea-water. Of four seeds that floated in sea-water three were 

 afloat after a month. The seeds of Erythrina corallodendron displayed 

 no floating power and possess non-buoyant kernels. 



Genipa clusiifolia, Gr. (Seven-year Apple) 



This remarkable maritime shrub, which attains a height of from 

 four to six feet in the Turks Islands, has a limited distribution, being 

 restricted according to the authorities to Cuba, the Bahamas, and 

 South Florida, though its presence in Hispaniola would seem probable. 

 Although it is well distributed over the Bahamian region, extending 

 to the extreme south-easterly sub-groups, the Inaguas, the Caicos 

 Islands, and the Turks Islands, it has not been recorded from Ber- 

 muda. Its absence from the Florida sand-keys west of Key West 

 is of interest, since it grows on the Florida coast ; whilst this and the 

 other negative features of its range go to suggest a small capacity 

 for dispersal by currents. It belongs to a genus that is confined 

 to the warm regions of the New World. 



Yet there is much to attract the student of dispersal in the " Seven- 

 year Apple," the name by which it is known all over the Bahamian 



