CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
15 
This is a small tree, about 12 feet high, with copious foliage, 
which I foimd growing near the aqueduct, at a spot called Agoas 
Novas, on the ascent of the Corcovado, in July 1837, and of 
which I made an analysis from living specimens. The bark of 
the younger branches is of a dark red colom’, soon cracks and 
peels off, leaving the surface somewhat rugous and tubercled. 
Its leaves are alternate, with internodes half an inch apart ; they 
are 3i to inches long, 1|^ to li inch broad, upon a thick chan- 
neled petiole, 3 or 4 lines in length ; they are polished above, 
dull, and of an apple-green colour beneath. The small cluster 
of flowers, densely aggregated in each axil, is scarcely half the 
length of the petiole ; they spring successively out of a closely 
imbricated bud ; the bracts, calyx, and corolla ai’e covered with 
minute glandular subresinous elavate spicula, harsher and shorter 
than bail's, the two fonner of a reddish colour, the latter exter- 
nally grayish. Each flower is about y\jth of an inch in length ; 
the ealyx is cup-shaped, fleshy at base, the margin being sub- 
membranaceous, ciliated, and obsoletely 6-toothed ; the petals 
are very fleshy, oblong, truncated, and compressed at base, acute 
at summit, where they are much thickened internally, so as to 
be almost trigonous, and where the surface is covered with close 
short glandular reddish resinous elavate hairs ; about the middle 
arises a tuft of long white hairs, which overshadow the summit 
of the anthers and embrace the stigma ; when open, they are erect 
and scarcely thrown back. The stamens are one-third the length 
of the petals, the filaments being one-sixth the length of the an- 
thers and equal to them in breadth ; they are affixed by a small 
point at their base to the foot of the petals, and both attached by 
this common point to the outer margin of the cupuliform disk : 
the anthers from their gibbous form lean forward, and are eon- 
nivent around the style ; the structure of the anthers has been 
sufficiently described. The cupidiform disk is quite smooth, and 
is supported on a very short stipes within the more external eup- 
shaped calyx, to which it is equal in depth ; its margin is thin, 
somewhat undulating about the points of insertion of the sta- 
mens, and fleshy towards the base ; the ovarium is in the form of 
a very depressed eone, somewhat attenuated at the base, where it 
terminates in a short stipitate support ; below it is quite smooth, 
but it is sm’mounted by a broad thick fleshy gland, slightly co- 
nical, marked with twelve raised striae, radiating fi-om the base of 
the style to the margin of the overlapping crenated border, which 
is encircled by the more elevated margin of the cupuliform disk ; 
the rays and style are covered with grayish resinous globules or 
papillae, like those seen on the external face of the petals. The 
internal structure of the ovarium has been already described *. 
* This species, with ample generic details, is shown in plate 2. 
