i\m 



BECCAKI. 



a portion of the stem, and an entire leaf from a full-grown plant; it was collected 

 by A. Loher at Montalban, Province of Rizal, Luzon, in February, 1908, {No. 7071 

 in Herb. Kew.) . 



Jt is a scandent and robust species. The sheathed Btem is 5 to 6 cm 

 in diameter and the naked canes are 2.6 cm thick. The leaf-sheaths are 

 rather thick and woody, more or less covered with tobacco-colored, very 

 appressed and almost immersed scales, and are strongly gibbous above, 

 obliquely truncate at the mouth, which is entire, lias a sharp margin and 

 is more or less furnished with spines; they are also armed, especially in 

 their upper part and above the gibbosity, with rather robust, scattered, 

 horizontal, short (5 to 10 mm long) spines, which have a broad base and 

 leave on the surface of the sheath a very distinct impression of their 

 form; this is concave on the lower and convex on the upper surface; the 

 lignle is represented by a short rim inside the mouth of the sheath. The 

 leaf is about 2.2 m long in the pinniferous part and terminates in a 

 rather long, very robust cirrus; the petiolar part is very short, 2.5 cm 

 broad at its base, flatfish and covered with small, erect prickles above, 

 rounded and smooth beneath, its margins more or less prickly; the 

 rachis is fiattish and also prickly above in its first portion, but higher 

 up becomes convex, and towards the extremity has an obtuse, salient 

 angle; beneath it is slightly convex, more or less covered with rusty scales, 

 and armed toward the upper extremity of the pinniferous part with at 

 first solitary, then ternate, and finally half-whorled very robust claws ; on 

 their cirrus the half or the three-quarter whorls are regularly spaced 

 every 3 to 4 cm. The leaflets are about 80 on each side, rather regularly 

 alternate and equidistant, 3 to 6 cm apart, and toward the end even 

 more; they are rigidly papyraceous, green, smooth on the nerves and 

 concolorous on both surfaces, somewhat concavo-convex, lanceolate or 

 elliptic-lanceolate, acuminate, the tip bristly; the medial leaflets are 30 

 cm long, or thereabout, and 5 to 7 cm broad; those of the extremities are 

 smaller, all are 5-COetulate, with a few secondary, rather distinct nerves 

 interposed between the costae; transverse veinlets very crowded and 

 numerous; the margins spinulous near the base, the spinules gradually 

 passing into rigid, spreading hairs near the apex. The spadix is rather 

 diffuse, 7d cm in length, slightly nodding, with a rather rigid axis and 

 only 4 or 5 partial spreading inflorescenses. The primary spathes are 

 tightly sheathing, fugaciously rusty-furfuraceous, elongate-infundibuli- 

 form, armed with small, short claws in their upper part; the lower spathe 

 is -J() cm long, IS cm broad at the mouth, flattened, very sharply two- 

 edged, entire and obliquely truncate at the mouth, which is fringed with 

 small, rusty palcola 1 , and is produced at one side into a triangular, acutely 

 keeled point; the other primary spathes are entire, 10 cm long, narrowing 

 toward the base, where they are flat, with sharp margins on the inner 

 side, and are prolonged at the apex into a triangular, acutely keeled point. 

 The partial inflorescences are '20 to 85 cm in length, have only 3 or 4 



