108 CXLVII, PALME (WRIGHT). [ Calamus. 
of ovary minute or absent. Female flower: Calyx cupular, trifid. 
- Corolla tubular at the base ; lobes 8, ovate, acute, valvate. Staminodes 
6, united into a cup free from or adnate to the corolla-tube. Ovary 
ovoid or globose, incompletely 3-celled; style short or long; stigmas 
short or long; ovules 3, erect. Fruit globose or ellipsoid, 1- (very 
rarely 2-3-) seeded; style terminal; pericarp covered with retrorsely 
imbricate scales. Seed various in shape, smooth or sinuously sulcate, 
suberect ; chalaza lateral; branches of the raphe extending from the 
chalaza to opposite the position of the subbasal or central embryo ; 
albumen homogeneous or slightly ruminate—Armed, usually slender 
palms. Stems long climbing, rarely erect, remotely ringed. Leaves 
remote, equally pinnate ; leaflets equidistant or fascicled, usually setose 
on the nerves and margins; rhachis usually prolonged into a long leaf- 
less spiny cirrhus; petiole short or long, trigonous ; sheath spiny, some- 
times bearing a long spiny flagellum from ome side. Spadices short or 
long, with slender (rarely thick) paniculate branches, polygamous or 
diccious; spathes many, tubular; bracts densely imbricate; flowers 
distichous or subdistichous on the branches, 1 or 2 to each bract; 
bracteoles free or connate. 
Species about 200, chiefly in Tropical and Subtropical Asia, and a few in Australia. 
Leaflets linear-lanceolate. 
Fruit ovoid, pointed, brown . . : 1. C. deeratus. 
Fruit globose, obtuse, mucronate, reddish 2. C. niger. 
Leaflets oblong-lanceolate 3. C. Bartert. 
Leaflets obovate-trapezoid 4. C. Cabre. 
1. C. deerratus, Mann & Wendl. in Trans. Linn. Soc. xxiv. 429, 
i. 41, fig. F. Stem climbing, 20-25 ft. long. Leaves about 5 ft. long, 
ovate, patent ; sheath cylindrical, tight, unarmed below, with transverse 
rows of recurved subulate-conical spines above, oblique and furnished 
with very acute spines at the mouth; petiole semiterete, 3 in. long; 
6 lin, thick, slightly channelled above, margins and back with a few 
erect subulate spines 9-12 lin. long; leaflets linear-lanceolate, much 
contracted at the base, acuminate, about 35 on each side, alternate, 
equidistant, 7-nerved, with black bristles on the margins and under 
(rarely upper) side of the nerves, and minute light brown scales on the 
undersurface ; central leaflets 14-15 in. long, 12-14 lin. wide, 1-1} in. 
apart ; terminal leaflets 6 in. long. Spadix elongate, slender, decurved, 
main axis prolonged into a very long terete naked appendage, primary 
branches twice or thrice simply branched; peduncle connate at the 
base with the sheath of the uppermost leaf; spathes long, cylindrical, 
obliquely split at the apex, the lowest about 1 ft. long, ancipitous and 
distantly spinulose on the margins, the upper unilateral and sparingly 
spiny ; bracts cup-shaped, obliquely acuminate, bracteoles dense, smaller 
than the bracts and less acuminate; flower-bearing branches 2 in. long: 
Male flowers 3 lin. long, solitary, yellow. Calyx cup-shaped, trifid ; 
lobes broadly-ovate. Corolla twice as long as the calyx, tripartite; 
lobes oblong-ovate. Stamens 6; filaments subulate, united at the base ; 
anthers linear-oblong, sagittate at the base. Rudiment of ovary glo 
