M. rumphii] METROXYLON.  - 171 
easy spirals. The time of blooming, however, is different, the male flowers being 
precocious or opening and drooping before the female are ready for pollination ; in 
a second period therefore the spikes show only the female flowers, and spiral furrows 
indicate the spaces left empty by the fallen male flowers. The full-grown 
flower buds (male and female) are obovoid-oblong, obtuse at apex, and narrow 
somewhat at the base, are 6—7 mm. long and 3 mm. broad and have their lower 
half immersed in the villosity of the bracteoles. The calyx is more or less deeply 
3-lobed. the lobes are subcoriaceous, half-ovate, obtuse, and faintly striately-veined 
externally ; the corolla is one-third or one-half longer than the calyx, and is 
divided in its upper two-thirds into 3 coriaceous concave boat-shaped segments, 
its lower third part being entire and campanulate. The male flowers are a little 
narrower than the female; the stamens form with the united bases of the filaments an 
urceolum almost entirely connate with the undivided part of the corolla ; in the free 
part the filaments are broadly linear, flattened, truncate at the apex, but terminated by 
a very minute apiculum, to which are attached the anthers at about the middleof their 
backs ; the anthers are elongate-elliptical, obtuse, their cells are parallel and open 
laterally and are.disjunet in their basal part. Rudimentary ovary represented by 
3 small oblong bodies, arising from the bottom of the undivided part of the corolla. 
The female flowers have stamens similar to those of the male but the anthers are 
slightly smaller ; the calyx is more deeply 3-lobed, and finally 3-parted ; thé 
ovary is obovoid-turbinate, abruptly narrowing into a thick style, whieh is deeply 
suleate or stamped, with the outlines of the anthers, and reaches, with its acute 
stigmatiferous apex, the summit of the anthers. Pruit globose, 4°5 em. across 
usually a few millimeters longer than broad, more or less hollowed-umbilicate cat 
the base, and flattish or slightly excavate and mueronulate above. Scales shiny, in 18 
longitudinal series, regularly rhomboidal, almost as long as broad ; the mesials are 
12—15 mm. wide, somewhat convex, and having a deep furrow, continuous along 
the centre in all the scales of the same series ; are of a dirty straw colour when 
dry and slightly darker near the margins; the true marginant part of the scales 
is very ‘narrowly ‘scarious ‘and discoloured, and very minutely erose-ciliolate ; 
the apices arte slightly produced, appressed and bluntish. The seed is almost always 
abortive, even in fruits having a fully-developed periearp ; when, however, the seed 
is normally evolute, it is undistinguishable from that of M. Sagus. The fruits either 
with abortive or with normally evolute seeds, are externally alike, have the 
mesocarp spongy-succulent, 6—10 mm. thick, and slightly thicker in its basal part 
than at the side. If the seed is abortive, it nevertheless completely fills the 
endocarpal cavity, has a very smooth surface and apparently seems perfect, but 
consists almost entirely of a fleshy hypertrophic mass of cellular tissue, derived 
from the integument, and containing in its central part the obsolete rudiments of 
the ovule, without any trace of the albumen. Fruits with a nearly normally 
conformed seed are some from Elmer's No. 11160 from the Philippines : in these 
the nucleus is covered with a thick dry (once fleshy) integument, penetrating into 
the orbicular. cavity of the albumen, which is also evidently horse-shoe-shaped 
in vertical section, although somewhat imperfectly evolute for a teratological 
‘cause in my specimen; otherwise it is indistinguishable from the seed of M. Sagus. 
Evidently the continuous multiplication of this species by offshoots has caused 
frequent imperfect sexual reproduction. 
ANN. Roy. Bot. GARD., CALCUTTA, Vou. XII. 
