cook: a new genus of palms 121 



generic designation. Its reference to Loroma cunninghamiana would 

 appear to be justified by some descriptions, but the type of this species 

 seems to have been a smaller palm and different in other respects. 

 The case is complicated at the beginning by the fact that the two 

 original accounts of this species, by Hooker and Wendland, do not agree. 

 Hooker's description and plate, published in 1857,^ under the name 

 Seaforthia elegans, indicate a relatively small, slender palm with a 

 broad flat crown of horizontal spreading leaves, and about 30 pinnae 

 on each side of the midrib. The form of the leaves appears to be 

 oblong, with little indication of the extreme reduction of the pinnae 

 at the base and tip, or of the tendency of the leaves to stand erect 

 and turn on edge, as shown in Loroma ameihijstina. This individual 

 had been raised at Kew from seed sent from northern Australia by 

 Allan Cunningham, but no definite locality was given. 



The most obvious discrepancy is that Wendland, in proposing the 

 new name Ptychosperma cunninghamiana,'^ gives the number of pinnae 

 as 55-65 on each side of the rachis. It appears that Wendland had 

 a palm in his garden in Germany that had been considered as dis- 

 tinct from Ptychosperma elegans; but the new species was not named 

 until after Wendland had visited Kew and seen the palm that had 

 been raised from Cunningham's seed^ — ^the individual figured by Hooker 

 as Seaforthia elegans. In naming the species Ptychosperma cunning- 

 haryiiana and referring to Hooker's plate as the only published illus- 

 tration, Wendland must be considered to have adopted the Kew palm 

 as the type of his species. Yet it is difficult to believe that a botanical 

 drawing made at Kew would have failed to show an approximation 

 to the correct number of pinnae. The possibility that Wendland 

 studied a different palm in Germany and included some of its characters 

 in the description naturally suggests itself. 



A color difference is indicated in Hooker's account of the flowers, 

 which are described as "a pale, dull lilac," instead of a rather bright 

 pinkish purple, as in L. amethystina. The staminodes also appear 

 much larger in Hooker's drawing than in the type of L. amethystina. 

 Hooker states that the palm was "said to attain a height of 30 feet 

 in its native country," while Wendland and Drude, in transferring the 

 species to Archontophoenix in 1875,^ give the height as 40-60 feet, 

 and add several other particulars that may not relate to the original 



2 Curtis' Bot. Mag. III. 13: pi. 4961. 

 *Bot. Zeit. 16:46. 

 ' Linnaea 39 : 214. 



