60 ANNALS OF THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN, CALCUTTA. ;P. floribundus. 
OssERVATIONS.—The habit of this palm is that of a Plectocomia, the leaf-sheaths 
not being puckered above, gradually passing into the petiole, and not having ocrea 
or ligula at the mouth.  Tlie stem and leaves are very much like the correspond- 
ing parts of Myrialepîs Scortechinit, and the leaves, as in it, have also the lower 
‘surface covered with microlepidia. Its generic position, as that of P. floribundus 
remains uncertain because their female flowers and fruits are unknown, and because 
in many respects P. paradorus and P. floribundus more resemble Myrialepis Scorte- 
chini than. Plectocomiopsis geminiflorus and P. Wrayu. 
P. paradoxus is characterized by its leaves with grouped lanceolate leaflets, having 
all nerves smooth and being dotted with  mierolepidia underneath, and by the 
peculiar structure of the male flowers. It is certainly a palm with terminal definite 
inflorescence. 
PLate 38.—Plectocomiopsis paradoxus .(Kurz) Bece.—Upper part of a flowering 
male partial inflorescence. From one of the typical specimens in the Herbarium 
at Petrograd. 
5. PLEcrocomropsis?  rLoRiBUNDUS Bece. in Webbia, iii, (1910) 239. 
DescripTion.—Scandent and of moderate size. Leaf-sheaths marked by the depres- 
sions stamped upon them by the spines during the prefoliation, covered with an 
adherent dark-brown or rusty-furfuraceous scurf, and armed with obliquely seriate, 
slender, acicular, light coloured spines, frequently confluent by their bases and 10—12 
mm. long: at most. Leaves (apparently belonging to adult plants) 1 m. long (at 
times even more?) in the pinniferous part; the petiolar part very short, thickish 
2—4 cm. long, 1 em. broad, concave on the upper, convex on the lower surface. 
armed on the outer margins with straight spines; on its back the spines are 
straight, often geminate or ternate and deflexed ; the rhachis on the upper surface 
of itg lower portion is convex, and from the midi upwards has two faces separated 
by a not very sharp salient angle; at times it is spinulous on the sides; on the 
lower surface, lower down along the centre, it is armed with a line of straight 
deflexed, often geminate spines, which higher up are gradually transformed into 
rather robust claws at first geminate, then ternate and finally regularly half whorled ; 
in the cirrus both petiole and rhachis covered with a. thin tobacco-coloured indu- 
mentum, later partially deciduous. Leadets about 30 in all (besides a few rudimentary 
at the upper end) very distinctly approximate in fascicles of 2—3 on each side 
of the rhachis, the fascicles of one side being almost opposite to those of the other 
side, and forming ou the whole 5—6 very distinet groups, separaied by long vacant 
spaces ; the leaflets are papyraceous; ‘more or less narrowly lanceolate, broadest below 
the middle, tapering thence to an acute, strongly plicate base, and narrowing above 
to a gradually acuminate and finely subulate tip; are equally green on both surfaces 
but on the lower surface are distinctly dotted with very minute orbicular pale 
microlepidia ; the mid-costa is slender and on each side of it are 5—6 very slender 
secondary nerves ; transverse veinlets short, immersed in the parenchyma and visible 
only by anita light ; both margins conspicuously thickened and frequently armed 
with distant, pale, short, spreading, at times conspicuous spinules, otherwise quite 
smooth ; the intermediate leaflets (the largest) mostly 20—30 em. long, sometimes 
