P. pierreana. PLECTOCOMIA. 43 
not accrescent, quite explanate and sessile on its pedicel; the calyx very small, 
5 mm. across, with 3 deltoid acute or acuminate teeth ; the petals striately veined, 
anceolate-acuminate, slightly falcate, several times longer than the calyx, 19—13 mm. 
long, 3—4 mm. wide at. the base; the sterile stamens form a flat stellate disk, 
with 6 deltoid teeth, subulate at apex and bearing small sagittate anthers. 
HanrrAT.—North-West Siam, discovered by Dr. A. F. G. Kerr, the 30th April 
1911, at Doi Soetep near Chiengmai at 1,200, m. elev., in dense evergreen jungle ; 
No. 1817 in Kew and Beccari Herbaria. 
Osservations.—Allied to P. Pierreana Becc. and perhaps like that derived from 
P. khasyana Griff. It is characterized by the conspicuously discolorous leaflets, 
puberulous-white beneath ; by the spathels glabrous glaucous in their upper half; 
by the male spikelets being very densely flowered; by the male flowers having 
very small trigonous 3-toothed, ,quite glabrous calyces; by the fruit being obsoletely 
mammillate, not, woolly, but very slightly squarrose, having the scales with short 
ciliate points ; by the fruiting perianth having the calyx explanate and split, but 
trigonous and 3-toothed ; and by the petals narrowly lanceolate-acuminate and 
falcate, several times longer than. the calyx. E oi 
P. «kerzdun;. diffors.. from Pif Pierreama in Mita io slightly mammillate fruit, 
having an exactly spherical seed, and being covered by scales with bluntish not, 
produced apices; and in the fruiting perianth having the calyx not. AUR smaller 
and with much longer and more acuminate petals. | 
From P. khasyana it differs in the quite glabrous (not externally pubescent) 
spathels, and ‘in the axes of the spikes being rusty scabrid. 
PLATE 27. dit Kerrana Bece. HE A of the upper part of a flowering 
male plant with a spike before the anthesis.. Male spike in flower; the end of a 
leaf. From Kerr's No. 1814, in Herb. Becc. Bees 
PLATE 28.—Plectocomia Kerrana Bécc.—Spike with mature fruits ; detached fruits : 
seed cut through the embryo; intermediate portion of a leaf. From Kerr's No. 1814 
in Herb. Bece. 
LatIN DIAGNOSIs.—Plectocomia Kerrana Bece. sp. nov. Frondium segmentis conspicue 
discoloribus, supra virentibus, subtus indumento tenui, puberulo, albido, indutis ; 
spicarum parte axili scabrida; spathellis glabris in dimidia superigri parte glaucis ; 
floris 4 calyce parvo, trigono, tridentato, omnino - glabro; fructibus sphaericis, 
majusculis, obsolete mammillatis, sub-squarrosis, squamis apice breviter ciliatis ; semine 
sphaerico; perianthio fructifero explanato,. Lago anguste lanceolato-faleatis quam 
calyce pluries. longioribus. i 
12. PLecrocomia PrERREANA Bece. in Webbia, iii (1910), 236, 244, and in Bull, 
| Mus. d Hit. Nat. Paris, 1911, No. 3, 158. 
Drscription.—Apparently one of the smaller species of the genus. The leaves 
that are known with certainty to belong to it are only those very near the flower- 
ing end of the plant, placed immediately below the inflorescence ; such leaves have 
the leaf-sheath about 2 cm. in diameter, sprinkled with small very short spines 
especially abundant along the dorsum and near the margins of the mouth; the 
ANN. Roy. Bor. GARD., CALCUTTA. VOL. XII. 
