2 INTRODUCTION. 
The spines of D. ozycarpus are also very singular, being quasi-membranous, 
and at the same time apparently formed by the coalescence of several slender 
spines; such spines would appear less intended to protect the plant, than (like the 
membranous circles already mentioned) to furnish a point of support for ants 
which construct amongst them their habitations of the most heterogeneous 
materials, 
In the species belonging to the groups of D. Hystriz and D. Draco and 
in D. ruptilis, the leaf-sheaths are armed at their mouths with large, erect, and 
laminar spines: these in D. Hystriz at times attain the extraordinary length of 
30 cm., and are 7—8 mm, wide at their base. 
IV.—The Ocrea, 
This is almost always very short, and generally reduced to a small ring, 
or ligula, at the junction of the leaf-stalk with the leaf-sheath. 
Usually the ocrea is glabrous, but in D. ochrolepis, in D. longipes and in a few 
others it is densely hispid. In one (and only one) species, D. ursinus, I have found 
two filiform appendages at the side of the base of the leaf-stalk, densely hispid and 
20—25 cm. long, which would appear to be morphologically derived from the ocrea, 
and to be therefore analogous to the large stipuliform auricles which are found 
at the base of the leaf-stalk in Calamus erectus. 
V.—Spadices and Spathes. 
The spadices of the  Daemonorops differ notably from those of the Calami as 
much in the spathes as in the axial parts. As in the Calami, they nearly always 
spring laterally from a leaf-sheath, but sometimes in certain small non-scandent 
species they approach by degrees to the apex of the stem, and are mixed with 
leaves, greatly reduced in size, in such a manner as almost to form a compound 
terminal inflorescence (D. petiolaris, D. microthamnus, D. calicarpus), The spadices of 
Daemonorops are never unusually elongated, nor are they ever cirriferous at their 
extremity, even in a rudimentary manner; also every kind of spine is want. 
ing in the axial parts above the base of the peduncular part, that is, from the 
insertion of the outermost spathe upwards. D. longispathus alone—the male spadix 
of which sometimes attains a length of over two metres—possesses an extremely 
slender axial portion, which however is quite free from spines. As in the Calami, 
the spadices of Daemonorops are always dioecious, though one may sometimes happen 
to meet with a male spadix with a hermaphrodite flower here and there.* It is 
possible that the female spadices of some Cymbospathae are sometimes cleistogamous— 
at least, I suppose they may be, having observed that certain still closed spadices 
* Mr. H. N. Ridley (Mat, Fl. Malay. Pen. ii, 171) says that the spadices of the Daemonorops 
are usually unisexual, and that male and female inflorescences are on the same stem—a fact which I have 
never observed. The same author (l.c. p.172) adds that “ both sexes occur on the same plant": furthermore, he 
describes the spadix of JD. angustifolius as having a ''bisexual spadix, male and female flowers on the same spadix 
jn pairs." Apparently Mr. Ridley has considered as a fertile male flower the neutral or sterile flower which accompanies 
every female flower on the female spadix in all the species of Daemonorops i have examined. 
