118 SUPPOSED ALTERNATION OP FUNCTION IN PALMS. 



female flowers still stand singly, the male flowers in pairs, on their re- 

 spective spadices and stems, the missing flowers of the opposite sex 

 being sometimes indicated by scars or by empty bracteoles. In Lepi- 

 docaryum the flowers are distichous on the ramuli of the spadices, soli- 

 tary in their receptacles on the female plant, twin on the male. From 

 all this, it is obvious that the specific characters that have been drawn 

 from the flowers standing by ones, twos, or threes, in or on their re- 

 ceptacles, are absolutely null, for they merely indicate sexual conditions, 

 not specific difi"erences."] 



However, when I find Gard. Chron. 1869, p. 1092, and Bot. Zeit. 

 1869, p. 664, putting that paragraph prominently forward, I can no 

 longer abstain from briefly pointing out what were my own observa- 

 tions on the flowers of Geonoma, Willd. 



The fact that Geonoma is monoecious, and not dioecious, has already 

 been published by me. Of the three flowers deeply imbedded in the 

 rachis, the central one is female, the two lateral male. The latter (i. e. 

 males) invariably flower several days, even weeks, before the female ; 

 they flower but a single day, and then drop off, very seldom remaining 

 shrivelled up in the foveolae. Although I have examined hundreds of 

 spadices in their native country and on cultivated plants, I have 

 never observed any essential deviation, never any unisexual spadices. 

 Wherever the latter seemed to exist, the female flower was behindhand 

 in development, but still normal, or the males had done flowering and 

 had already dropped off. The fact that male flowers had been pre- 

 sent was proved by the bracteolae which remained in the foveolce. 



That the Geonomas which Dr. Spruce has met with should be so es- 

 sentially difl'erent from other species of the genus I am not inclined to 

 accept, and much less believe in an alternation of the development of 

 dioecious flowers, based upon the statements which Dr. Spruce made with 

 regard to Geonoma. Maximilliana regia and Leopoldinea* I have not 

 seen in a fresh state. ChamcBdorea {NunnezJiaria, H. et Pav.) is a strictly 

 dicEcious genus ; and, moreover, the flowers are never in threes, but 

 always isolated. 1 must therefore hold these observations of Dr. Spruce 

 as a delusion until further proofs shall have been adduced to the con- 

 trary. — Ilermaim Wendlund in Bot. ZeUmifj, 1809, p. 791. 



* Probably misprint for Lepidocaryum. — Eds. 



