4 INTRODUCTION, 
the axial portion of the spadix is often very short, much more in  Cymbospatha 
than in Piptospatha. 
In all the species of the group Piptospatha the male panicle is usually more 
elongated than the female; thus the male panicle of the species belonging to the 
group of D. Draco is almost always very strictly cuprossiform, while the female is 
loosely and diffusely paniculate at least during the period of fructification. Only 
in a few species (D. geniculatus, D. longipes and D. longispathus) is the male 
panicle comparatively large and spreading. In D. scapiyerus the panicle is very 
short, and borne on a long and slender peduncular portion. In the species of 
group Cymbospatha, the internodes of the female Jaa are very short, and often 
swollen in their basal part. | 
Very frequently the various organs of  Daemonorops, and specially those of the 
species belonging to the section Cymbospatha, are covered with a rusty or tobacco- 
coloured indumentum, wbich is extremely characteristic and is exceedingly noticeable 
in D.“ tabacinus; also the various parts of the spikelets are covered with a similar 
rusty-looking scurf, which is formed of small, dry scales carried upon a short 
pedicel or very short base: with age those scales fall off, while their bases, which 
are persistent, render the surface on which the scales rested minutely scabrous. 
The appendicular parts of the spadices of the Duwemonorops, although constructed 
on the same plan as those of the Calami, nevertheless present certain features 
proper to themselves: these will be described later. 
VI.—The Spikelets. 
The spikelets of Daemonorops differ greatly, as a general rule, in the sexes, and 
appear at a first glance to be, in almost every case, very different from those of 
the Calami; yet they are, as a fact, constructed on the same plan. I know only 
of two species (D. verticillaris aud D. geniculatus) in which the male spikelets are 
indistinguishable from those of a Calamus, with comb-like spikelets, with close-set 
flowers, infundibuliform spathels and cupular involucres (Pl. IT, f. 6). Also the male 
spikelets of D. longispathus greatly resemble those of the Calami; but generally the male 
spikelets of Daemonorops have a very slender axis, the spathels are reduced to mere 
scales, and the involucres are scarcely distinguishable; the male spikelets of all the 
species of the group of D. Aystrix and D. Draco have this structure. The male 
flowers on the axis of the above-described spikelets are moreover but rarely 
perfectly distichous, and they are not arranged in one plane; whereas the contrary is: 
almost always the case in the Calami. The male spikelets of D. longipes recall those 
of certain Gramineae. In a very few cases (in D. longispathus and D. rupitilis) the female 
spikelets are, in their spathels and other involucres, extremely similar to those of a 
Calamus; but, as a rule, they differ greatly from the latter, so much so that several 
authors refuse to call them spikelets at all, but branchlets, on account of their 
spathels not being infundibuliform but resembling mere scales, and also because 
their involucrophorum is far more developed than in a Calamus, being often several 
millimetres in length, and thus forming a pedicel to the fruit, although it does not 
possess a very distinct limb (Pl. I, f. 1, 5, 7, e). 
