158 
FLORA OF ADEN . 
curved. Leaves alternate, more or less distichous, with 3, rarely 4 or 5, 
basal nerves. 
Flowers small, pentamerous, mostly bisexual, generally in axillary 
cymes. Calyx cup-shaped or broad-obconical, lobes keeled inside, petals 
sometimes wanting, disk lining the calyx-tube, edge free, pentagonous 
or 5-10-lobed. Ovary immersed in disk, and more or less confluent with 
it, 2-celled, rarely 3-or 4-celled ; styles 2-3, free or partly connate. 
Drupe as a rule fleshy ; stone rugose or tuberculate, 1-3-celled, 1 seed 
in each cell ; embryo in thin albumen, cotyledons thick, flat or convex, 
radicle short, inferior. 
Species about 40. 
Distribution : — -Most species are Indo-Malayan, a few in Africa, 
America and Australia. 
Leaves 1 — 3 inches long, crenate-serrate . . . 1. Z. spina Christi. 
Leaves | — 1§ inches long, obsoletely crenate . . . 2. Z, lotus. 
1. Zizyphus spina Christi (Forsk.) Willd. Sp. PL 1,1105; DC. 
Prodr. II, 20 ; Boiss. FI. Or. II, 13 ; Batt. et Trab FI. d'Alg. p. 189 ; 
Oliv. FI. trop. Afr. I, 380. 
Rhamnus Spina Christi L. Sp. PI. 282. 
Rhamnus nabeca Forsk. FI. Aeg.-Arab. p. 204. 
Zizyphus africana Mill, n 4. 
Zizyphus napeca Lam. Diet. Ill, 320 (non Roxb.). 
Zizyphus jujuba Defl. Bull. Soc. Bot. France XXXII. 
Arabic name : — Elb, elan, ssidr, arg. 
Description : — A tree or shrub with white long flexuose or short 
imbricate branches. Leaves ovate, ovate-oblong or lanceolate, obtuse or 
acute, often mucronate, equal at the base, crenate-serrate, 1 — 3 inches 
long, glabrous or slightly pubescent beneath when young especially along 
the veins; petioles £ — 1 inch long ; stipular spines when present short, 
both or 1 only recurved. 
Cymes pubescent, few- or many-flowered, sessile or on peduncles from 
a line to an inch or more in length. Flowers large for the genus. Calyx 
densely pubescent. Disk large, furnished with a fringe of hairs around 
the base of the styles. Styles united above the middle and then spread- 
ing, not recurved. 
Drupe 2-celled, large, fleshy, spherical. 
Locality : — Plain of Maala (Schweinf.) ; ravine west of the Tower of 
Silence, crater of the Shum Shum Range (Defl.) ; without locality 
(Balfour). 
Distribution .— Senegambia, fNiger, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Nubia, 
Abyssinia, S. Arabia, Socotra# 
