2 
ON QUASSIA EXCELSA. 
than the sepals. Stamens five, about as long as the petals, 
rather shaggy; anthers roundish. Ovaries three, seated 
on a round, tumid receptacle. Style three-cornered, trifid ; 
stigmas simple, spreading. Fruit three, globose, one- 
celled, two-valved drupes, which are distinct from each 
other, placed on a broad, hemispherical receptacle. — (Flor. 
Med.) 
Spec. Char. A tree fifty to sixty feet high, with the 
branches spreading, the bark rimose, ash-coloured. Leaves 
alternate, impari-pinnate; leaflets opposite, shortly petioled, 
oblong acuminate, unequal at the base, blunt at the apex? 
venose, glabrous. Racemes towards the ends of the branch- 
lets axillary, very compound, panicled, sub-corymbose, 
dichotomously branched, spreading, diffuse, many-flowered. 
Peduncles compressed, rufescent, downy. Flowers small, 
pale, polygamous. Filaments of the male flower much 
larger than the petals; in the fertile, of the same length. In 
the male merely the rudiments of the pistil; in the fertile, 
ovaries, three; style, longer than the stamens, ihree-quetrous, 
trifid. Drupes three, but only one coming to perfection, 
the size of a pea, black, shining, fixed on a hemispherical 
receptacle ; nut solitary, globose, with the shell fragile. 
(Macfadyen.) 
In Jamaica, where it is abundant, the plant is called 
Bitter-ash and Bitter-wood\ it grows in the mountains of 
this island, and others appertaining to the West Indies. 
In 1791, a paper, by Mr. John Lindsay, Surgeon in West- 
moreland, Jamaica, was read before the Royal Society of 
Edinburg, (see Vol. iii. Trans. ,)in which he called the tree 
Quassia Polygama. Sir Hans Sloan, who called at Bar- 
badoes, noticed the bitter wood. In his Catalogue he de- 
scribed it thus: Melanomma et Melanoxylon, arbor lanci- 
folia, gemmis nigricantibas, Americana. He refers to 
Plankenet, Tab. 205, p. 3, which plant (Sima?*uba) Lind- 
say says is different from his. Dr. Patrick Brown and Mr. 
Long mention the tree in their Histories of Jamaica, by the 
