SYRINGE TREE. 
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cies of the genus, and has been mentioned by seve- 
ral naturalists. Amongst others Aublet has noticed 
its fruit, and the milky and resinous juice which 
exudes from its trunk ; but Richard, a French bo- 
tanist, was the first who described the flower, no 
one before his time having paid any particular at- 
tention to that part of the plant. Each flower-stalk 
bears a great number of male flowers, with one soli- 
tary female placed at the top. Neither the one nor 
the other have any corolla ; but there is a bell or 
cup-shaped calyx in the room of it, with five teeth. 
There are five stamens to each male flower, of 
which the filaments are united into a little cylin- 
drical column, much shorter than the calyx, carry- 
ing their oval anthers a little below the summit of 
the column. The female flowers have no style, but 
merely a superior germ, of a globular and conical 
figure, upon which we find three flat stigmas. The 
fruit is a capsule consisting of three ligneous husks, 
each of which enclose two or three white seeds of a 
pleasant flavour, wrapped up in a thin and brittle 
coat. 
This tree is described as very straight and tall. 
According to Aublet, if grows to the height of fifty 
or sixty feet. The trunk measures two feet and a 
half at the base, and the branches, which shoot out 
from the top, grow in all directions. The leaves 
are oval, thick, and tough ; growing three together 
upon the same leaf-stalk, and having both surfaces 
glazed, but of a different colour, the superior surface 
vol. hi. R 
