86 DB, E. SPaUCE ON EQUATOMAL-AMERICAN PALMS. 



In Wettinta, a genus formerly banished from the true Palms, 

 and described to have a perfectly simple ovary, I have invariably 

 found three carpels, combined only at the very base, whereof the 

 two sterile ones remain adhering as two knobs at the base of the 

 ripened fertile carpel. In Nimnezharia also the three carpels are 

 very obvious, and the sterile ones persist after the same fashion. 



§ 3. Palmce Exocarpicce^ or Palms tvJiich have the sterile carpels 



excluded from the pericarp of the ripe fruit. 



In most of the Arecina?, then, in some Coryphinse, &c. the nor- 

 mal condition is to have an ovary of three carpels, either entirely 

 separate, or joined from the base up to a greater or less height, but 

 very rarely quite to the summit, three styles, nearly always com- 

 bined into one, and springing from the centre of the ovary or from 

 the point of divergence of the carpels, w^ith as many distinct 

 stigmas. In most cases only one carpel is fertile, and in ripening 

 it swells chiefly at the outer circumference, scarcely at all at the 

 inner J so that when ripe, the style and the abortive carpels re- 

 main adhering to the inner face, or to the very base, of the fruit, 

 or their former site is indicated by a lateral scar ; but they do 

 not grow along with the fertile carpel into a 3-celled fruit with 

 two empty cells. This group we may be allowed to call '^ Exo- 

 earpiece"*. 



§ 4. Palmce Endocarpiccv, or Palms which have the sterile carpels 



included in the pericarp. 



But in what we may call " Palmse Endocarpicae," the carpels are, 

 from the first, united to the very apex, and have a terminal style, 

 or three terminal sessile stigmas ; the ripe fruit is symmetrical, 

 and the carpels are combined within a single endocarp, which is 

 marked (usually towards one end) with as many foramina as there 

 are carpels f. When, as is usually the case, only one of the car- 

 pels is fertile, then the foramen opposite to that carpel is open and 



(fc 



endocarp 



rations 



1859. In inentiouing tliid I put forth no claim to a first discovery. Other cau- 

 tious observers must have seen the same thing, possibly before I did. 



♦ Martias and Endlicher express the exocarpic structure by " Fructus endo- 

 carpio cujusvis carpidii distincto, aut abortivorum a fertilis formatione excluso." 



t '* Fructus monopyrenus, saepissime unilocularis, loculis abortirisin fertilis 

 putamine seu endocarpio inclusis." (Mart., Endl.) 



