26 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
from ^ to 1;^ inch long, the ultimate pedicels being 1 line long. 
In the female plant, the leaves are 7 inches diam., the lobes 
3-4 inches long; the petiole is 7^ inches long, slender, swollen 
and tortuous at base ; the fructiferous raceme is 5 inches long, 
with eight or nine simple alternate pedicels 3 lines long; drupe 
10 lines long, 8 lines diam., semiglobose, obsoletely stipitated at 
base; putamen as before described. 
3. Jateorhiza. 
The root of the typical species on which this genus is founded 
was known for a very long period in commerce under the name 
of Calumba ; but the plant that produced it remained quite in 
obscurity until Sir William Hooker published his interesting 
account of it in the ^Botanical Magazine,’ tab. 2970, 2971, 
under the name of Cocculus palmatus. On the examination 
of its male and female flowers, as well as of its seed, I found that 
it constituted a new and valid genus, to which the name of 
Jateorhiza was given, on account of the medicinal properties of 
its root. In 1851, in my “ Notes on Menispermacese,” I gave a 
very short outline of its leading characters, having two years 
previously prepared a more ample diagnosis of the genus and 
the characters of a new species, at the request of Dr. Hooker, 
which he published in his ‘ Niger Flora.’ The plants of the 
genus, natives of intertropical Africa, are all climbers, distin- 
guished by a very peculiar habit, having very large deeply lobed 
leaves, upon very long petioles, and clothed with long strigose 
hairs; their inflorescence is in long slender racemes; the fruit 
is a drupe containing a putamen much resembling that of Odon- 
tocarya, and which in like manner is covered with a dense 
hairy coating imbedded in the fleshy mesoderm. In the struc- 
ture of its putameir, and the form of its embryo, imbedded in 
partially ruminated albumen, it quite conforms with the other 
genera of the Heterocliniece. The bitter and tonic qualities of 
Calumba-root are supposed to be owing to the presence of a 
peculiar principle allied to cinchonine, and called calumbine, 
the exact nature of which is not fully ascertained. 
Jateorhiza, nob. — Flores dioici. Masc. Sepala 6, ovata, 2- 
seriata, exteriora paulo minora, sestivatione imbricata. Pe- 
tala 6, ovata, sepalis paulo breviora, apice truncata, lateribus 
introflexis stamina tegentia. Stamina 6, petalis opposita et 
subsequilonga ; filamenta carnosa, apice valde tumida ruguloso- 
punctata subito refracta, et extrorsum antherifera; antherm 
globoso-d-lobse, intus d-locellatse, rima horizontali 2-valvatim 
hiantes. Ovaria rudimentaria 3, centralia, punctiformia. — 
Foem. Sepala ut in masc. Petala cuneato-obovata, crassius- 
