86 
DRIMOPHYLLUM. 
feet high, with erect, terete, and smooth branches. The 
wood is white and rather soft. The leaves are alter- 
nate, evergreen, coriaceous, perfectly smooth, three to 
four inches long, and f to 1J inches wide, lanceolate 
pointed, but obtuse, entire, with very indistinct slender 
lateral nerves, and strongly but minutely reticulated 
above; the footstalks are about two to three lines long. 
The odour and taste of the leaves are very aromatic, 
the latter so much so as to be quite pungent, even more 
so than the leaves of the Bay, and they are employed 
as condiments by the inhabitants. The flowers are in 
small contracted clusters, et first surrounded with bud 
scales, which are caducous, but not in the form of an 
involucrum. The flowers are about four or five toge- 
ther, on pedicels nearly as long as themselves. The 
perianth is yellowish, funnel-formed, and somewhat 
spreading, deeply 6-cleft, the segments linear-spathu- 
late and smooth, a little pubescent within towards the 
base. Stamens 9, with short and broad filaments, the 
anthers oblong, 4-celled, all opening from within, the 
cells parallel and nearly all equal, with the valves 
ascending, the three innermost each furnished towards 
the base of the filament with two large reniform, sessile 
glands. The perianth is deciduous, the base alone being 
persistent, and enlarging with the 1 -seeded berry. The 
perfect fruit I have not seen. 
Plate XXII. 
A branch of the natural size, a . The flower enlarged. 
