Cycas. DIOECIA MONANDRIA, 745 
This beautiful, small palm has of late years been introduc- 
ed from Amboyna into the Company’s Botanic garden, where 
it thrives freely; blossoms in May, and ripens its seed in De- 
cember and January. 
The trunk of our young trees, now ten or twelve years in 
this garden, and some years old when they arrived, is from 
two to five feet high, and from eighteen to twenty-four inches 
in circumference, very rough with the swelled scars of the 
fallen leaves, Leaves spreading round the crown of the 
plant, numerous, viz. sixty or seventy, pinnate, of a smooth, 
shining, deep green in every part, from three to six feet long. 
Leaflets generally from fifty to sixty on each side, conse- 
quently rather remote, in some parts opposite, in others alter- 
nate, of a linear-lanceolate, sickle form, acute, almost flat, 
very smooth and-entire, from four to ten inches Jong, and 
about halfan inch broad. Petioles nearly round, smooth, from 
twelve to twenty-four inches of the base destitute of leaflets, 
and there generally armed with a row of short sharp spines 
on each side. Stipules, so I call the numerous, pointed, vil- 
_ lous, imbricated scales, which are mixed amongst the swell- 
ed leaves of the petioles, and closely embrace the peduncle 
of the strobile. Male strobile elevated on a short, thick, firm 
peduncle, from the crown of the plant, ovate oblong, being at 
first about nine or ten inches long, but lengthening to nearly 
double that extent, and continuing throughout about five 
inches in diameter, imbricated with numerous, diverging 
scales, After continuing in vigour for nearly two months, 
its peduncle is forced to one side, to give room for the annu- 
al tuft of foliage, which then begins to appear from the cen- 
tre of the crown of the plant, Scales wedge-shaped, obli- 
quely-truncated, and thereclothed with much fulvous down. 
In two of the three male plants now in blossom, a large, erect, 
subulate point rises from the exterior upper angle of each 
of the scales ; when the strobile first appears they are closely 
pressed together like the germs in the pine-apple, bat as it 
lengthens by age they become detached from each other, and 
VOL, Il. aP 
