soil, intermixed at their very base with many dark brown, 
jasged, and much decayed scales. Leaves spreading, petio- 
ated, one and a half to two feet long, and almost of the 
same breadth, membranaceo-coriaceous, between rotundate 
and flabelliform, plicated, and marked with many strong 
ribs, of which the central and two lateral ones (which are 
branched near the base,) are the strongest, and remarkably 
prominent on the underside ; the extremity of the leaf is, as 
it were, truncated, bifid in the middle, with a narrow cleft, 
reaching about half way down, the lobes laciniated: the 
whole very much resembling, as Mr. Loppiers has well 
observed, the young leaf of the cocoa-nut. Petiole four 
to six inches long, thick, keeled at the back, grooved in 
the front, the two edges membranous and often jagged. 
From the centre of these leaves arises the scape, short, thick, 
about as long as the petioles, concealed by several large, 
oblong bracteas, or leaves of the spatha: for the uppermost, 
which only differ from the rest in being more delicate, 
constitute the spatha. Spadix two to three inches high, 
scarcely rising above the spadix, clothed with flowers of 
two kinds, male and female, as many apparently of the one 
as the other. The Male Flower consists of numerous small 
stamens, arising from a thickened, cylindrical, fleshy co- 
lumn or receptacle, by means of which they exceed the 
female flowers in length. Filaments very short: Anthers 
rounded, two-lobed. Female Flower nearly sessile, having 
only a short, fleshy base, consisting of a Ee alabed: four- 
sided, fleshy perianth, whose lobes are erect, and very 
obtuse, within which, and shorter than it, is the four-lobed 
-germen, each lobe having a depression which represents 
the stigma. A section of this germen exhibits one cell 
with four rounded, parietal receptacles, to which numerous 
ovules are attached. Between the perianth and the ger- 
men, and alternating with the lobes of the latter, are four 
very long, rather thick, fleshy filaments, or abortive sta- 
mens? The fruit I have not seen. | 
The habit of this plant, its foliage especially, is so 
similar to that of the Palms, that it is no wonder it has been 
considered to belong to that family. But an attentive ex- 
amination of the structure of the flowers proves it to be 
one of the true Arorpex. Five species of this Genus were 
described by Ruiz and Pavon, a sixth by Humsoxpr and 
Kounru, and two more by Porreau in an excellent paper on 
the Genus, in the “ Mémoires du Muséum.’ But with the 
exception of L. funifera of the latter, all are so imperfectl 
characterized, 
