lowish-white, crowned with a sessile, flattened stigma." Dr. Bancroft, on dissecting the recent germen, found it to be "thick and fleshy, having a small cavity in the centre, with globular ovules arranged around the whole internal surface, the seedstalk varying in length."
The fruit is figured and described by Gærtner as, " a simple, nearly globose, one-celled, glabrous, corticated Berry. Receptacle none, but the Seeds imbedded, without order[1], in the pulp: they are ovato-oblong, angled by mutual pressure, ferruginous. Integument double. Albumen of the same form as the seed, fleshy, hard, sculptured with deep, nearly parallel lines, and a longitudinal furrow. Cotyledons foliaceous, cordato-lanceolate. Radicle rounded, directed to the hilum."
We are much indebted to Dr. Bancroft of Jamaica for a drawing, and specimens both dried and in spirits, and for an accurate description of this plant. The fruit alone was described by Gærtner, under the name of Anona Myristica, from Sir Joseph Banks Museum. According to the Hortus Jamaicensis, the tree is reported to have been brought from the continent of South America[2] and planted at the Retreat Estate, Clarendon, Jamacia, where it was described by Long, but where it has since been destroyed. That author says of it, that the seeds are all packed close with singular regularity, so that after displacing them, it is impossible to restore them to the same order and compactness as before:–that thy are impregnated with an aromatic oil, resembling that of the Eastern Nutmeg, from which they differ so little in flavour and quality, that they may be used for similar purposes in food or medicine; the only perceptible difference to the taste being that they are less pungent the the East Indian Nutmeg: and he recommends it to general cultivation. Dunal, who had the use of Professor De Candolle's notes, made from dried specimens in Mr. Lambert's Herbarium, determined it to be a Genus widely distinct from Anona, differing indeed in the structure of the petals and fruit, as Dr. Bancroft correctly
remarks,
- ↑ Dr. Bancroft justly observes, that it is only necessary to observe the disposition of the seeds, as represented in Gærtner's own figure, to perceive that their position is the reverse of being "absque ordine", the hilum of each seed being regularly centrifugal, as might have been anticipated from the kind of arrangement which is to be seen in the ovules of the Germen.
- ↑ Mr. Brown considers it more probable, that it was brought by the Negroes from some part of the West coast of Africa.
