Kermadec Islands: Sunday Island, not uncommon on the northern and eastern sides of the island, T.F.C. Candle-nut.
Widely distributed in the Pacific islands and tropical Asia, also extensively planted and naturalised in hot countries. The seeds or "nuts" contain an excellent oil, so that in many parts of Polynesia they are strung on sticks and used as candles, whence the English name of "candle-nut."
4. HOMALANTHUS, A. Juss.
Glabrous shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate, petiolate, broad, entire, often glaucous; stipules deciduous. Flowers in terminal racemes, small, apetalous, monœcious. Male flowers: Very numerous, occupying all the upper portion of the raceme. Calyx of 1 or 2 minute flat appressed sepals. Stamens 6–50; filaments very short; anther-cells distinct, divaricate, longitudinally 2 - valved. Female flowers: Few or solitary at the base of the raceme. Calyx 2–3-partite. Ovary 2–3-celled; styles 2–3, linear, entire; ovules 1 in each cell. Capsule didymous or trigonous, fleshy, indehiscent or splitting into 2–3 2-valved cocci. Seeds with a fleshy aril.
Species 7–8, scattered through the Pacific islands, Australia, and the Malay Archipelago.
1. H. polyandrus, Cheesem.—A handsome slender tree 10–25 ft. high, everywhere perfectly glabrous; branches brittle, terete, marked with the prominent scars of the fallen leaves. Leaves in young plants 3–12 in. diam., in old much smaller, 2–4 in. long, broadly triangular-ovate or rhomboid-orbicular, acute, membranous, somewhat undulate, glaucous beneath; petiole as long or longer than the blade; stipules ¾ in. or more. Racemes slender, erect, 4–8 in. long. Male flowers: Very numerous, rather loosely placed, 112 in. diam.; bracts minute, 1–2-glandular at the base. Stamens about 40, very short, closely packed in a globose head. Female flowers: 1 to 4 at the base of the raceme, on long slender pedicels, drooping. Capsule ½–⅔ in., trigonous, 3-celled, splitting into 3 cocci. Seed enveloped in a yellowish aril, frequently persistent on the axis of the fruit.—H. nutans. Hook. f. in Journ. Linn. Soc. i. 127 (not of Guill.). Carumbium polyandrum, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 248; Cheesem. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xx. (1888) 172.
Kermadec Islands: Sunday Island, plentiful; Macaulay Island, a few plants in the crater-basin, T.F.C. Flowers most of the year.
Endemic, but very closely allied to the Polynesian H. pedicellatus, Benth. (Carumbium nutans, Muell. Arg.), principally differing in the larger number of stamens.
Order LXXVI. URTICACEÆ.
Herbs or shrubs or trees, of very diversified habit and foliage. Leaves alternate or opposite, entire or toothed or more rarely divided; stipules present. Flowers unisexual, small aud incon-
