JAMAICA BOX-WOOD. 
43 
export from the Bahama islands, where it is valued at 
about 40 dollars the ton. From Poiteau’s herbarium it 
appears to grow in the island of St. Domingo; it is also 
apparently identic with the Jamaica plant of Sloane. 
The wood is pale yellow, very close and fine-grained, 
and might easily be mistaken for that of the true Box, 
which name it bears in the Bahamas. 
The twigs are slender and covered with a light grey 
bark. The leaves are very smooth and shining on the 
upper surface, with slender branching veins, lanceolate 
and very acute, yet on the lower part of the same 
specimen blunt or even emarginate, but they are always 
narrow'ed below. The male flowers (the only ones I 
have seen) are small, on very short peduncles, 3 or 4 
together, with a rather minute calyx, and 4 broadish, 
green, oblong, obtuse petals. The stamens are usually 
4, shorter than the petals, sometimes more by the in- 
graftment of 2 peduncles. The stigmas are 2 and short. 
The berries rather flattened and 2-lobed, about the size 
of a grain of cubebs, dry, but with a thick integument, 
2-celled, 2-seeded, and of a pale orange-yellow when 
ripe. Appearances of resin are visible on some of the 
buds, and the berries have rather an acrid bitter taste, 
something like that of tobacco; yet, notwithstanding 
their disagreeable taste, they are greedily devoured by 
birds. 
The w r hite flowers of S.frutescens, the S. completa of 
Swartz, and its humble stature, appear to distinguish it 
from our plant. 
Plate LVI. 
A branch of the natural size. a. The male flower, b. The 
fruit. 
