268 NOTES ON THE FLORA OF CEYLON. 



considered the same as the common and well-known wild Date of 

 India, P. sylvestris Eoxb. It is, however, clearly distinguishable 

 by its different habit, stouter trunk, shorter leaves, with more rigid, 

 dark green, shining, non-fasciculate segments and black fruit. It 

 is a common plant in Ceylon, but is not known in South India save 

 in the Botanic Gardens. Tlie fruit has a scanty pulp, which is 

 scarcely edible. Linnaeus's original Elate sylvestris (Sp. Plant, i. 

 1189) was mainly based on this plant (= Fl. Zeylanica, n. 397), 

 but he also quotes Kheede, ' Hort. Malab.,' iii., tt. 22-25, which is 

 probably the common Indian species. Whether the other Ceylon 

 Flucnuv, noted in a former part of this paper as P. imsilia Gaertn., 

 is truly a distinct species may be open to doubt, but both it and 

 P. zeylanica are quite different from the yellow-fruited P. sylvestris 

 of India.* 



I have been accustomed for some years to call our Palm P. zey- 

 lanica, and the name has also been published for it in the List of 

 Palms cultivated at Kew, printed as an appendix to the Eeport of 

 that establishment for 1882. Sir Joseph Hooker, who has made a 

 careful study of the genus, is convinced of the distinctness of the 

 Ceylon plant. 



Calamus nivalis Thw. ms. — Leaf-sheaths armed with copious 

 large, straight, flat, yellow prickles, passing on the rachis beneath 

 and at the sides into distant, solitary, recurved ones ; no terminal 

 cirrhus ; rachis raised above, smooth ; segments numerous, closely 

 placed, equidistant, broadly linear, tapering at both ends, with 3 

 principal nerves and other intermediate ones, with a few distant 

 scattered setae on the principal nerves beneath and at the apex ; 

 spadix slender, elongated, set with hooked thorns, extended into a 

 terminal thorny lorum, slightly branched; flowering branchlets 

 usually short, numerous but not crowded, more or less stiffly 

 recurved ; larger spathes prickly, smaller ones slightly so or 

 smooth ; bracts ciliate ; male flowers crowded, with scanty fulvous 

 scurf ; calyx cut half-way down ; petals and stamens raised on a 

 stalk so that the former appear as long again as the calyx ; female 

 flowers larger and less crowded ; corolla 3-toothed, fulvous- 

 puberulous ; fruit f in. long, with a large point or beak, ovoid ; 

 scales small, pale yellow, not channelled, tipped, and narrowly 

 bordered with reddish brown. 



Hab. Pasdun Korle, Sept. 1864; Colombo, W. Ferguson fC. P. 

 3914 in Herb. Perad.). Not a large species. Leaves about 3 ft. 

 long, the longest segments about 9 or 10 ins., bright pale yellow- 

 green. 



A near ally of C. tenuis Roxb., which differs in its general 

 furfuraceous covering, smaller more distant and usually hermaphro- 

 dite flowers on shorter branchlets, and nearly globular fruit with 

 larger scales. I am indebted to Mr. W. Ferguson for fresh speci- 

 mens in flower, collected about five miles from Colombo by the 

 Koti Canal. 



* Tlie liuit of this is, when ripe, 1 in. long by ~ in. wide, and of a dull 

 purplish orange, having passed through in ripening a bright oransfe-chronie 

 yellow ; the pulp is more copious, with a sweet flavour quite similar to that of 

 the cultivated date. 



