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МЕ. SPRUCE ON FIVE NEW PLANTS FROM EASTERN PERU. 191 
On Five New Plants from Eastern pef ui RICHARD SPRUCE, 
Esq. Communicated by Gro. BenthHám, Esq., V.P.L.S. 
[Read March 3rd, 1859.] 
I. WETTINIA ILLAQUEANS, a new PALM from the Peruvian 
Andes. 
Among the many interesting plants discovered by M. Poppig in 
his downward journey from the sources of the Huallaga to the 
mouth of the Amazon, none was more remarkable than the un- 
described Palm which he gathered “in Transandine Peru, in the 
beautiful shady woods which border the northern bank of the 
river Tocache," and which was afterwards published by himself 
and M. Endlicher under the name of Wettinia augusta. Its place 
in the system was considered doubtful by Endlicher, who left it 
at the end of Pandanec, with the remark that it afforded a рав- 
sage from Screw-pines to Palms, and would perhaps be ultimately 
reckoned among the latter. I have been on the look-out for this 
plant from the day of my entering the forests of the Huallaga; 
and though I have not yet seen the original species, nor have 
reached within 100 miles of Pæppig’s locality for it, I have found 
what is obviously a second species of the same genus, which has 
enabled me to decide that Wettinia must definitively be stationed 
among the true Palms. I have been so many years away from 
books, that I know not how botanists now-adays distribute the 
genera ascribed to Screw-pines by Endlicher and Kunth; but I 
believe that the American have been separated from the Eastern 
genera, and, as it appears, with perfect justice. In fact, the 
American plants, formerly referred to as Screw-pines, seem to me 
to constitute two distinet orders, each of equal value with Pal- 
таеее and Pandanacee, viz. 1st, Phytelephantacee, which are (so 
to speak) palms with an inferior ovary ; and 2nd, Cyclanthacee, 
whose inferior ovary alone separates them from Arads. Wettinia, 
however, is far removed from both these; the fruits are superior, 
and though so densely crowded on the spadix as to suggest the 
inferior concrete fruits of Phytelephas, there is no real resem- 
blance to the latter. The habit, the ringed stems, the male and 
female flowers, the structure of the ovary and fruit, are in every 
respect as in Palms. Wettinia Maynensis, like W. augusta, has 
entirely the aspect of an Zriartea. The straight, smooth, ringed 
stem, of 30 to 40 feet high, is supported on a cone of emersed 
prickly roots 3 feet in height; the petioles are dilated into long, 
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