OF THE SEYCHELLES. 137 
of hard fibres imbedded in medullary substance enclosed in a 
hard sheath, so hard that a good axe is required to cut it. It 
splits readily, but is extremely durable. Unlike the Cocoa-nut 
trees, which bend to every gentle gale (flecti sed non frangi), 
and are never quite straight, the Coco de mer trees are as upright 
as iron pillars (frangi sed non flecti), undisturbed in their posi- 
tion by the heavy gales and violent storms so often occurring in 
tropical regions. 
At the age of thirty the tree first puts forth its blossoms. The 
male and female trees are quite distinct; and the female blossom 
may be considered as the germ of the nut, as it offers nothing of 
the appearance of what is generally regarded as a blossom. The 
female tree alone produces the nut, and it is twenty feet shorter 
than the male tree, which frequently attains a height of one hun- 
dred feet. 
The male flower is an enormous catkin, about three feet in 
length and three inches in diameter, of a reddish-brown colour, 
and covered with rhomboidal valvate scales disposed spirally about 
the stem, from the angles of which the stamens spring. Within 
its circumference, at intervals corresponding to the apertures 
from which the stamens shoot, are found little masses containing 
such a succession of stamens in progressive stages of development 
that the flowering is maintained for eight or ten years, each 
coming stamen thrusting off and replacing the one that preceded 
it. The whole has a most disagreeable, oily odour, and if cut 
and put in any accessible place, is greedily attacked by ants. It 
may be seen in all stages upon the same tree—in full bloom, 
faded, and quite decayed. 
The female blossoms spring from a strong stem forming a regu- 
lar zigzag, and are composed of three bracts three or four inches 
in diameter. A gummy secretion exudes from the apex of these, 
which secretion doubtless arrests and secures the pollen necessary 
for their fecundation. The fruit-stalk is supported by three very 
strong bracts; the outer one of these, the top of which is wedge- 
Shaped, penetrates the stalk of the leaf immediately above it, in 
the under side of which nature has left a fissure accessible to it. 
By this provision the stalk is enabled to support the weight of 
fruit which hangs upon it, sometimes exceeding four hundred. 
weight. Eleven nuts have been seen on one stalk, the probable 
weight of each being about forty pounds. Such clusters are, 
however, very rare, and four or five may be taken as the average 
number on one stalk. 
