MR. SPRUCE ON FIVE NEW PLANTS FROM EASTERN PERU. 193 
obtained of the affinities of Wettinia among the genera of palms. 
If we are guided by the triple ovary, then it must be stationed 
in Coryphine; but the only genus described by Kunth in this 
tribe with pinnate leaves is Phanix, which, besides being very 
different in habit, has the stamens never more than 9, and a 
sessile stigma on each ovary. But if we be guided by the sum of 
all the characters, we shall place it next the genus which most 
resembles it in habit, viz. Iriartea. Iriartea has the same emersed 
cone of roots, the obliquely premorse and incised pinns, the 
numerous stamens; one species (7. setigera) has setulose fruit; 
and a seed of T. exorrhiza placed by the side of one of Wettinia - 
Maynensis, is scarcely distinguishable—it is veined in the same 
way by the vessels of the rhaphe, and the embryo has the same 
position. If the spathes are not the same in number in the two 
species of Wettinia, so also are they different in nearly every 
species of Iriartea ; in I. setigera they are 4 or 5, in I. exorrhiza 
5 or 6, and in J. deltoidea 10 to 12. Lastly, as the ovaries of 
Wettinia are concrete at the base with each other and the central 
style, they may, and perhaps ought to, be looked on as a deeply 
3-cleft ovary, analogous to the 4-cleft ovary of Labiates ; and then 
the difference from the 3-celled ovary of Iriartea will not appear 
so very great. The character of the spadices of Wettinia, pre- 
viously alluded to, though striking at first sight, does not disturb 
the affinity with Iriartea. 
Hence we may either place Wettinia in Coryphinzs, and con- 
sider it analogous to Iriartea in Arecine, or, by another classifi- 
cation of the genera of palms, place it actually by the side of 
Iriartea. 
Wettinia Maynensis is not unfrequent at the head of valleys in 
the Maynensian Andes*, both north and south of the river Mayo, 
at an elevation of from 3000 to 4000 feet, where it grows in com- 
pany with the Chontat (Euterpe oleracea’), the Tarapoto (Jri- 
artea ventricosa, Mart.; the Paxiuba barriguda of Brazil), and 
another Iriartea, which is perhaps I. deltoidea, Ruiz et Pav., 
* I apply the term “ Maynensian Andes" to so much of the eastern slopes 
of those mountains as was comprehended in the ancient province of Maynas. 
They are watered by the lower part of the Huallaga till it emerges into the 
great Amazonian plain through the Pongo of Chasuta, and by some of its 
principal tributaries, especially by the Mayo, which, taking its rise a little east- 
ward of Chachapoyas, passes Moyobamba and Lamas, and enters the Huallaga 
near Tarapoto. . 
t The name “ Chonta” is applied in Maynas to two species of Euterpe, and 
also to the palmito or terminal bud of all palms. : 
LINN. PROC.— BOTANY. 
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