C. rotundifolia was received by the Royal Gardens from 
Dr. Wendland, Director of the Herrenhausen Gardens, 
which are perhaps the richest in Europe in Cyclanthacee 
and Palms. It is a native of Costa Rica, and flowered in 
the Palm House at Kew for the first time in 1876. 
Descr. Leaves very many from the root ; petiole eight to 
nine feet high and two-thirds of an inch in diameter, nearly 
terete, dark green clothed with a minute furfuraceous 
‘ evanescent pubescence; blade of leaf four feet and up- 
wards in diameter, half-orbicular, base cordate, three- 
partite or through the fission of the middle segment four- 
partite ; segments broadly cuneate, margin multifid, the 
lobules one inch in diameter, acuminate, bright and shiny 
green above, three-nerved and opaque beneath, the lateral 
nerves towards the outer margin of the middle segment. 
Scape about a foot high, strict, erect in flower, nearly one 
inch in diameter. Spadizx eight inches long, densely clothed 
with interlaced tortuous very slender staminodes six to 
eight inches long. Male flowers about half an inch long, 
broadly cuneiform, compressed ; perianth segments many, 
very minute, ovate, apiculate; stamens minute, erect, 
crowded; filaments very short; anthers linear-oblong. 
Fem. flowers confluent; perianth segments four, minute, 
ovate, apiculate. Styles four, depressed, obliquely and 
gibbously globose or ovoid, each crowned with a pulvinate 
stigma. ruiting spadix seven inches long by one and a 
half broad, decurved, terete, tessellate, greenish-brown 
without, bright orange-red within; fruits cohering in a 
mass which breaks away from the scarlet pitted axis, 
exposing the ripe carpels in a fleshy bright orange-red mass. 
— 
. . . 
Fig. 1, Male flower ; 2, perianth segments of male; 3 and 4, anthers; 5, fem. 
flower with one staminode; 6,the same more advanced and the staminodes 
cut away :—all enlarged. 
