l. zeylanicus. | BECCARI. MONOGRAPH OF THE GENUS CALAMUS. 381 
slightly. concave,. rather sharply defined. Female flowers about 6 mm. long; the 
calyx almost entirely split into 3 ovate, concave,| acute, finely striately veined parts; 
the corolla slightly longer than the calyx, divided from the base into 3 lanceolate 
acuminate, striately veined segments; staminal urceolum shorter by one-half than the 
corolla and crowned by six broadly triangular teeth; sterile anthers small, deeply 
sagittate ; ovary ovate; style short; stigmata elongate, recurved, lamellose-tuberculate 
inside. Fruiting perianth explanate, but subtended by the subpedicelliform involu- 
crophorum. Fruit (when quite ripe) spheric, about 18 mm. in diam., topped by a 
distinct conic beak, this 4 mm. long; scales in 18 series, very convex, deeply 
channelled along the middle, dirty straw-yellowish, almost as broad as long (4°35 mm.) 
with a very narrow dark intramarginal line, margins light, scarious very finely 
erosely-toothed, tip obtuse adpressed. Seed globular, about 12 mm. in diam,, finely 
tubercled and pitted; the chalazal fovea circular and deep, penetrating to the centre 
of tbe albumen, but like all other unevenness of the surface covered with the very 
adherent (when dry) thin integument; albumen bony, very deeply ruminate; embryo 
subbasal. 
. . Hasrrat.—Ceylon, at Sassafragam in the hottest parts of the Island, Thwaites 
OC. P. No. 2874, With this number have been also distributed portions of the leaves 
which apparently belong to C. ovoideus.  Singalese name ** Ma-Waiwel" (Thwaites). 
OBsERVATIONS.—The specimens of the male and female spadices of this species 
distributed by Thwaites with the No. 2874 are accompanied by portions of leaves 
which evidently belong to two quite distinet species. I have considered as belonging 
to C. zeylanicus those which have the leaflets shining above and opaque beneath with 
3 slightly bristly costae above and the mid-costa with 3-5 very slender nerves on 
each side of it, finely and closely hairy in the lower surface. The other portions 
of leaves, which I consider as belonging to C. ovoideus, bave the leaflets shining 
on both surfaces with long bristles on 3 nerves in the lower surface, and the upper 
surface usually bristly on the two side nerves only. The distinctive characters of 
this fine species are the large cirriferous leaves, the leaflets numerous, equidistant, 
narrow, with many very slender hairy nerves beneath, the iarge panicled male spadix 
very different from the female one with small flattened spikelets ; the female spadix 
with long robust spikelets; the male and female spikelets inserted with a pedicel to 
the bottom of their respective spathe—a peculiarity also reproduced in the involu- 
crophorum ; the explanate perianth; the spheeric, rather large, distinctly beaked fruit; 
the ruminated albumen. , 
€. zeylanicus approaches in many respects to C. ovoideus, but this has a seed with 
almost equable albumen, while it is deeply ruminated in the first—a difference which 
however is of not very great importance in the genus Calamus. I have not seen 
the apex of an adult leaf of C. zeylanicus, but I have little or no doubt that it 
terminates in a [robust clawed cirrus; consequently the  leaf-sheaths ought to be 
without a flagellum, | 
Pirate 159,—Calamus zeylanicus Bece. Lower portion of a partial inflorescence 
with immature fruit (C. P. No. 2874 in Herb. de Cand.); small portion of a male 
spadix and portion of a female spadix with mature fruit; seed entire and one 
