Cecropia
(a classical name commemorating Cecrops, the fist founder of Athens, which was primarily known as Cecropia). Snake Wood. ORD. Urticaceae. Ornamental stove evergreen, soft-wooded, milky trees. They require a mixture of peat and loam, in a rough state, with the addition of a little sand. Propagated by cuttings, made of ripened shoots, in April, and inserted in sandy peat, with a bell glass over them, in a moist bottom heat. C. peltata (peltate-leaved). fl., male: receptacles numerous, shortly stipitate, in cylindrical spikes; calyx a turbinate, four-cornered scale. Female: receptacles less numerous and thinner than the male ones, sessile. l. large, peltate, seven to nine-lobed, hispid and rough above, white and downy beneath; lobes oblong, bluntish. h. 30ft. Jamaica, 1778. The fruits--four, five, or more--rise from the very top of a common peduncle, and shoot into so many oblong, cylindrical berries, composed of a row of little acini, something like the Raspberry, which they also resemble in flavour.