46 ANNALS OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN, CALCUTTA. Plectocomiopsis. 
PLECTOCOMIOPSIS Becc. 
Becc. in Hook. f. Fl. Brit. Ind. vi, 479; Ridley, Mat. Fl. Mal. Penins. i, 213 
(partly). CAR 
Large, scandent, calamoid, dioecious, monocarpie palms, with terminal inflores- 
cence ‘formed by several branches each issuing from the leaf-sheath of a reduced 
leaf. Leaves of ihe adult plant cirriferous. having leaf-sheaths -not gibbous above 
and gradually passing into the petiole; the mouth provided with a fugacious ocrei- 
form membranous appendage. Leaflets elongate, acuminate, straight, unicostate. 
sprinkled with microlepidia on the under surface; margins not or slightly thicken- 
ed; secondary nerves slender. Male and female partial inflorescences twice branched. 
Male flowering-branchelets elongate, bearing distichally several small few-flowered spike- 
lets. Male flowers having thick filaments united together in their basal part, and 
introflexed at the apex; anthers dorsifixed, dehiscing laterally; rudiments of the 
ovary very small or obsolete. Female spadix having’ the flower-bearing branchlets 
elongate, bearing distichally and alternately greatly reduced spikelets, composed of 
only two (rarely 3—4) female flowers, not accompanied by a male or neuter flower. 
and provided with only one disciform involuere. Female flowers of a thickish struc- 
ture; the calyx cupular-campanulate. 3-toothed; the corolla undivided and urceolate 
in the basal part, and more or less 3-lobed or 3-parted above stamens; with fila- 
ments united together to form a membranous tube more or less connate with the 
corolla, 6-toothed in the free part and bearing anthers apparently well conformed. 
Ovary oblong, obsoletely trilocular, 3-ovulate, the dissepiments of the cells soon 
obliterated ; stigmas short, thick. Fruit monospermous, globose, the pericarp fragile, 
covered with scales arranged very regularly in very numerous series. Seed globular, 
covered with a rather thick fleshy integument; the nucleus not pitted ; „albumen 
equable ; embryo basal. 
Onservations.— Plectocomiopsis is allied to Myrialepis, from which it differs espe- 
cially in the fruit, (which in Myrialepis is covered with very irregularly arranged 
extremely minute scales) and in the different conformation of the female flowers. 
Likewise Plectocomiopsis much resembles Plectocomia in the ‘vegetative organs, but 
the spadices andthe flowers, male and female, are ‘widely different in the two 
genera. 
. Only two species belong with certainty to the genus Plectocomiopsis, P. gemini- 
florus and P. Wrayi, P. dubius being a doubtful species. - Of the other two species 
I have ineluded in the genus Plectocomiopsis (P. paradoxus and P. floribundus), the 
male plant only is known, and in the absence of the female spadix and fruit, their 
generie positions remain somewhat uncertain, the more that they show also marked 
affinities with Myrialepis. È 
The stem of P. geminiflorus, and perhaps also of the other species of the same 
genus, is distinctly 3-gonous when the plants are young, but the tendency of the stem 
