Per sea. 1 
LATJRACEiE, 
291 
alternate coriaceous oblong leaves usually glaucous beneath with many 
strong erecto-patent veins, silky deeply 6-fid flowers in congested 
panicles shorter than the leaves, with persistent lobes, 9 fertile 
stamens the inner 3 furnished with a couple of glands above the base, 
3 staminodes, and a pear-shaped eatable fruit 3-4 inches long. Avocat, 
Avocado. 
1. MESPILODAPHNE, Nees. 
Flowers exinvolucrate, polygamo-dioicous. Perianth with an ob- 
conic tube and 6 equal deciduous oblong lobes. Fertile stamens 9, the 
three inner extrorse, with two glands at the base, all the anthers 4- 
celled ; staminodes none. Ovary included in the perianth tube ; style 
filiform ; stigma capitate. Fruit oblong, girt at the base with 
the truncate perianth-tube. — Shrubs or trees, with alternate feather- 
veined leaves and small flowers in lateral or terminal corymbs or 
panicles. Distrib. America and Mascarene Isles. Species 50. 
1. M. cupularis, Meissn. in DC. Prod. xv. 104. A shrub or low 
tree, 15-20 feet high, with only the youngest branches slightly pilose. 
Leaves alternate, coriaceous, oblong, green and glabrous on both surfaces, 
3-6 in. long, 1^-4 in. broad, obtuse or acute, deltoid or rounded at the 
base, with distant erecto-patent main veins with often a pilose gland 
at the base of the lowest, and more or less distinct reticulated veinlets ; 
petiole i-1 in. long, channelled. Corymbs few flowered, 1-2 in. long, 
peduncled or sessile, fascicled in the axils of the leaves, or from the 
nodes of pilose young shoots ; pedicels as long as or longer than the 
perianth. Perianth ± in. long, glabrous or thinly pilose, the 6 
(rarely 7-8) oblong greenish-yellow lobes as long as the deltoid 
tube. Stamens half as long as the limb. Fruit oblong, under 
an inch long, purplish, enclosed at the base in a cup about ^ 
in. broad and deep on a lengthened and much-thickened pedicel. M. 
mauritiana, heteromorpha, Lindleyana, marginata and cymosa, Meissn. 
loc. cit. Caly codaphne cupularis, floribunda and dysoxylon, Bojer , 
Sort. Maur. 273. 
Mauritius, in the mountain woods, now becoming rare. Also Bourbon and 
Madagascar. I cannot make out more than one species of the Mauritian plant. 
The leaves vary greatly in shape, texture, and in the distinctness of the venules. 
Bois de Cannelle. 
A Lauraceous plant of which we have a flowerless specimen from Mr. Horne 
(No. 445 !) and which he reports as common on dry soils in Mahe and Praslin, is 
perhaps a Mespilodaphne . It is a shrub 10 feet high, glabrous in all its parts, with 
slender terete branchlets, short petioles, alternate oblong acute leaves 2-3 in. 
long with a cuneate base subcoriaceous in texture green and quite glabrous beneath, 
with fine erecto-patent main veins which anastomose in arches a short distance from 
the edge and distinctly visible fine veinlets. The relics of the single flower show a 
slender axillary pedicel 1|- inch long, and a campanulate perianth in. broad and 
long, lobed nearly to the base. 
