Excerpt from Studies of West Indian Plants I
On March 20, 1908, while exploring a wooded hill near Dolphin Head Mountain, parish of Hanover, in the western part of Jamaica, in company with Mr. William Harris, we observed large trees which were unknown to us from the character of their trunks, and too high to enable us to determine the character of their foliage without a pair of field glasses, which we did not have along that day. While sitting at lunch in a relatively open place in the forest, we observed the top of one of these trees, some 30 meters high and at least a meter in diameter, against the sky line, and saw that it was covered with round fruits, some of which we found on the ground under this tree, and realized that we had found a very interesting species. Our negro guide felled a somewhat smaller tree with his machete, and thus enabled us to obtain excellent fruiting herbarium and museum specimens of the Jamaican species of Hernandia.
Up to this time the tree does not appear to have been definitely known to botanists in the island of Jamaica. Patrick Browne (Civil and Natural History of Jamaica, 373, 1756), admits the genus and remarks: "This tree is pretty common in Barbadoes and Mountserat, and grows to a considerable size in those islands; but I have not seen any in Jamaica, though I have been credibly informed that it was frequent in the parish of Portland. The cups that sustain and partly invelop the nuts are very large, and, as they move in the wind, keep a whistling noise, which is often frightful to unwary travellers. The seeds are very oily." Browne cites Jack-in-a-Box as a common name.
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