102 * MAHOGANY TREE. 
It has been given with success in powder, as a substitute 
for Peruvian Bark.* 
The leaves of the Mahogany have a very light, airy and 
graceful appearance, feathered or pinnate, in 3 to 5 pairs 
of leaflets, ending abruptly without any terminal one. 
They are remarkable for their obliquity or the inequality 
of their sides, the lower portion of the leaf from the mid- 
rib not being more than half as wide as the upper, they 
are quite entire, smooth, shining, and coriaceous like the 
laurel, being probably of long duration, and giving the tree 
the character of an evergreen ; their form is between ovate 
and lanceolate, with a very slender and sharply acuminated 
point ; the general footstalk is about an inch and a half 
long. The flowers are small and greenish-yellow, disposed 
in loose, axillary, long pedunculated panicles, 3 to 4 inches 
long and pendent. The flowers and their mode of growth 
are a good deal like those of the Melia, or Pride of India, 
but they are smaller. The calyx is minute, with 5 very 
shallow lobes. Petals oblong-ovate. Tube of the sta- 
mens cylindric-campanulate, 10 toothed, internally a little 
below the summit, bearing the anthers, which are small, 
yellow, and alternating with the teeth of the tube. A short 
denticulate disc encircles the base of the ovary. Ovary 
ovate, green; style cylindrical; the stigma peltate, with 
5 denticulations. Capsule egg-shaped, the size of an 
orange, rufous-brown, minutely tuberculated, 5-celled, 
opening with 5 valves from the base, covered within with 
a distinct coriaceous plate. Receptacle central, large, pen- 
tagonal, with the angles prominent, opposite, and meeting 
up with the edges of the valves, so as to form the septa of 
the cells; seeds at the apex of the receptacle, 15 in each 
cell, compressed, truncated at base, expanded at the sum- 
mit into a membranaceous, oblong wing. 
7 o O 
* Macfadyen , Flora Jamaic. p. 177 . 
