CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
223 
folia dense imbricata fere absconditis, alternatim 4-5-floris ; 
pedicellis brevibus, imo bractea majore, medio bracteola 
lanceolata pilosa donatis ; calyce ebracteato, profunde 5- 
partito, lobis oblongis, acuminatis ; bacca subglobosa, nitente, 
calyce persistente inclusa. — In Brasilia : v. s. in herb. Mus. 
Brit, et Hoolc., prov. Ceara (Gardner, 1793). 
This plant, somewhat resembling the preceding, was found 
by Gardner on the sandy banks of the Rio Salgado, near the 
town of led, in August 1838. It differs in its closer, more 
imbricated, smaller leaves, narrowed at the base, upon a very 
short petiole, and not sinuated on the margin. The branches 
are generally of no great length ; but the flowering branchlets, 
seldom more than 1^ inch long, and 4-6 lines apart, are thickly 
covered with imbricated leaves, and bear a single raceme 
almost hidden at their extremity ; the leaves are 6-8 lines 
long, 2^ lines broad, naiTowing gradually towards the base 
into an extremely short petiole ; the raceme is 4-8 lines long, 
with four or five alternate flowers, upon pedicels ^-1 line long; 
the basal bract is 3 or 4 lines, the median one 2 lines long ; 
the calyx is shortly campanular at its base, and cleft into five 
equal erect segments somewhat imbricated in aestivation, 
broader in the middle than at the base, and very acute, 2 lines 
long, smooth inside, covered outside with short soft hairs 
emanating from minute tubercles, and with ciliated margins ; 
the corolla is very deciduous, its tube 1 line long, its border 
somewhat campanulate and reflected, has five lobes 2^ lines 
long, I line broad ; the filaments, glabrous, fixed near the base 
of the tube, are 2 lines long; the anthers subglobose and 
didymous ; there is no disk, but the subglobose ovary is shortly 
stipitated ; the style is compressed, 2-grooved, the length of 
the stamens, and persistent ; the flat peltate stigma is 2-lobed, 
the drupe, subglobose, 4-grooved, slightly compressed, is 1 line 
in diametei', with a polished submembranaceous lax pericarp, 
apparently filled with mucilaginous juice which disappears in 
diying, enclosing four nucules, as before explained, attached 
to a membranaceous ventricose central column.* 
3. Rhahdia viminea^ Dalz. in Hook. Icon. tab. 823 ; — Ehretia 
(Xerodema) viminea. Wall. Cat. 906 ; D C. Prodr. ix. 569 ; 
— Ehretia cuneata, Wight, Icon. iv. tab. 1385 ; — ramosa, 
ramis teretibus, vimineis, adpresse setosis ; foliis alternis, 
copiosis, cuneato-oblongis, apice rotundatis et brevissime 
mucronatis, supra glabris, subtus adpresse setosis ; petiolo 
limbo lO-plo breviore : racemis in ramulis novellis termi- 
* * ' tion of this species, with ample structural details, is 
VOL. II, 
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