the trees, which it climbs by means of its clasping roots, pre- 
senting a very beautiful appearance. The leaves are used for 
basket-making. Two plants of it are grown in the Palm- 
house at Kew, and have attained one, the female, the height 
of five feet, the other of about three ; both flowered for the first 
time this year, the male first, and so long before the female 
showed any sign of flowering, that the pollen of the former 
was all shed before the opportunity offered of fertilizing the 
latter. The bracts of the male were pure white, those of 
the female a pale lilac. The plants were sent to the Royal 
Gardens in a Ward’s case by Dr. Hector, F.R.S., the Director 
of the Geological Survey of New Zealand. 
Descr. A lofty climber, ascending the trees for one 
hundred feet and more. Sfem rooting, slender, about one 
inch in diameter. Leaves two to three feet long by one inch 
broad, elongate linear-subulate, spreading and recurved, 
minutely spinulose-serrulate, keeled, concave, tip trigonous, 
green with a paler line halfway between the midrib and 
margin. Inflorescence dicecious, in the centre of the extremity 
of the branches, surrounded by bracts three to six inches 
long, that have an ovate very fleshy, white or pale lilac base 
and subulate tip. Spadices crowded, erect, shortly pedunceled ; 
males three to five inches long, by one-third of an inch in 
diameter, gradually narrowed to the obtuse tip, bright yellow. 
Flowers crowded, each consisting of eight to twelve stamens 
surrounding a vertically elongated crenulate green disk ; fila- 
ments slender, anthers small. Female spade shorter than the 
male, elongate oblong, cylindric, tip rounded. Ovaries densely 
crowded, consisting of a vertically elongated laterally com- 
pressed hard green style bearing eight to ten spathulate 
staminodes on its sides, and crowned by a crenulate stigmati- 
ferous disk, placed on a wedge-shaped cell, the inner surface 
of which is densely crowded with anatropous ovules. 
Fruiting spadix green, five inches long.—J. D. H. 
Fig. 1, Reduced view of branch, leaves, and inflorescence, about one-eighth 
natural size; 2, male spadix and bract ; 8, portion of spadix and male 
flower; 4, ripe female spadix; 5, its style and staminodes, of the natural 
size; 6, vertical section of ovary, with ovules :—magnified, 
