104 



Selections. 



[NO. 3, NEW SERIES, 



plant I have seen, the sepals are large and leaf-like, completely 

 covering the fruit. (It is probably Trophis spinosa, Roxb. — Epicar- 

 purus Timorensis, Bene!) TJncaites. 



We are indebted to Dr. Arnott for the following notes on the 

 genus Epicarpurus and its allies : — 



Blume, in his Bijdr., p. 488, has established the genus Epicar- 

 purus for a plant he calls E. orientalis^ and for which he cites 

 Rheede, Hort. Mai., vol. i. t. 43 ; this last is universally allowed 

 to be Trophis aspera. Blume, in the edition I possess, and the 

 only one I ever heard of, gives us no information as to the relative 

 size of the two cotyledons ; but M. Decaisne, in his ' Herb Timo- 

 rensis Descriptio,' p. 17 1, says, " M. Blume indique, dans son 

 Bijdragen, les cotyledons de son Epicarpurus comme etant inegaux." 

 In the E. Timorensis, which Decaisne describes and figures in that 

 memoir, the cotyledons are represented unequal, but he adds that in 

 " Trophis aspera, Wall. L, n. 4,640," the cotyledons are foliaceous 

 and equal. 



I do not know precisely what plant M. Decaisne had before him, 

 but in all that I have examined under the name or similitude of T. 

 aspera, the cotyledons are nearly as described by Roxburgh in his 

 Flor. Ind. vol. iii. p. 761, and represented in a drawing in the 

 E. I. C. Museum, tab. 118, viz., " cotyledons two, very unequal, 

 the largest being nineteen-twentieths of the whole embryo, and 

 one side divided half-way through into two lobes : the small cotyledon 

 is hid between the lobes of the larger one.' ? If M. Decaisne has, from 

 its smallness, overlooked the one cotyledon, and mistaken the two 

 lobes of the greater one for two equal cotyledons, the difference be- 

 tween his, Roxburgh's and my observations will be accounted for. 

 At all events, I consider that T. aspera (and so marked is that 

 species that I have seen no other confounded with it) must be held 

 as the type of Epicarpurus of Blume. 



In his ' Bijdragen/ p. 507, Blume suggests that his Urtica spi- 

 nosa is another species of Epicarpurus : Decaisne adds E. Timoren- 

 sis, and says that Albrandia of Gaudichaud also belongs to it. Gau- 

 dichaud's character of Albrandia. in Freycinet's Voy. p. 709, is too 



