ME. SPEUCE ON FIVE NEW PLANTS FEOM EASTEEN PEEU. 191 



On Five New Plants from Eastern Peru. By Eichaed Speuce, 

 Esq. Commimicated by Gteo. Bentham, Esq., V.P.L.S. 



[Eead March 3rd, 1859.] 



I. Wettinia illaqueans, a new Palm from the Peruvian 

 Andes. 



Among the many interesting plants discovered by M. Poeppig in 

 his downward journey from the sources of the Huallaga to the 

 mouth of the Amazon, none was more remarkable than the un- 

 described Palm which he gathered " in Transandine Peru, in the 

 beautiful shady woods which border the northern bank of the 

 river Tocache," and which was afterwards published by himself 

 and M. Endlicher under the name of Wettinia augusta. Its place 

 in the system was considered doubtful by Endlicher, who left it 

 at the end of Pandanece, with the remark that it afforded a pas- 

 sage from Screw-pines to Palms, and would perhaps be ultimately 

 reckoned among the latter. I have been on the look-out for this 

 plant from the day of my entering the forests of the Huallaga ; 

 and though I have not yet seen the original species, nor have 

 reached within 100 miles of Poeppig' s locality for it, I have found 

 what is obviously a second species of the same genus, which has 

 enabled me to decide that Wettinia must definitively be stationed 

 among the true Palms. I have been so many years away from 

 books, that I know not how botanists now-adays distribute the 

 genera ascribed to Screw-pines by Endlicher and Kunth ; but I 

 believe that the American have been separated from the Eastern 

 genera, and, as it appears, with perfect justice. In fact, the 

 American plants, formerly referred to as Screw-pines, seem to me 

 to constitute two distinct orders, each of equal value with Pal- 

 macecB and Pandanacece, viz. 1st, PhytelepJiantacece, which are (so 

 to speak) palms with an inferior ovary ; and 2nd, Cyclanihacece, 

 whose inferior ovary alone separates them from Arads. Wettinia, 

 however, is far removed from both these ; the fruits are superior, 

 and though so densely crowded on the spadix as to suggest the 

 inferior concrete fruits of PJiytelephas, there is no real resem- 

 blance to the latter. The habit, the ringed stems, the male and 

 female flowers, the structure of the ovary and fruit, are in every 

 respect as in Palms. Wettinia Maynensis, like W. augusta, has 

 entirely the aspect of an Iriartea. The straight, smooth, ringed 

 stem, of 30 to 40 feet high, is supported on a cone of emersed 

 prickly roots 3 feet in height ; the petioles are dilated into long, 



