306 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
red flowers, nearly campanulate, and consisting of a calyx 
only; within there are six hooded petaloid pedicellated bodies, 
answering both the purpose of petal and filament, each con- 
taining, and almost concealing (as in the infertile anthers of 
the larkspur) the two celled anthers. With the berry and 
germ I am unacquainted. As in the T. pinnatijida, there 
are interspersed among the flowers numerous abortive filiform 
peduncles, w^hich form a crinite tuft extending far beyond the 
flowers. 
The root of this plant, or the tubers, when pounded and 
washed, afford a fecula, which, under the name of Pea, is 
used extensively in the Sandwich Islands as an article of 
food, and goes among the white residents, usually, by the 
name of Arrow-root. 
The present species is readily distinguished from that of 
India, by the broader, more divided, and coadunate leaves, as 
well as by the short and broad leaves of the involucrum; it is 
also, apparently, a larger plant in all its parts, save the 
flowers. 
NOTES ON THE TACCACE^, BY THE EDITOR. 
The genus Tacca was originally placed in the order Aroi- 
deae, but it differs very widely from all its co-ordinates, and 
has some points of resemblance to the Aristolochiae, as was 
noticed by Brown, Prodrom. between which two orders it 
seems to hold an intermediate position. It has, on this 
account, been regarded by later botanists as the type of a 
separate new order, called Taccaceas. 
The genus Tacca is thus characterized: Perianth superior, 
of one leaf, in six deep, eliptic, oblong, equal, converging, 
permanent segments. Carolla, none. Filaments six, opposite 
to the segments of the calyx, into whose base they are inserted, 
and half as long, equal, dilated, flat, oblong, incurved, and 
vaulted at the summit, anthers sessile in the hollow of each 
filament, of two distinct lobes. Germen inferior, roundish, 
