360 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HLST. SOCLETY, Vol. XXL 



nearly to the middle into many narrow deeply two-cleft recurved 

 segments, separating on the margins into numerous slender pale 

 fibres, long-petiolate ; those of the first j^ear linear-lanceolate ; 

 rhachises short, slightly rounded on the back, gradually contracted 

 from a broad base, their margins concave, and furnished below with 

 narrow erect wings, slender and aciite above. Ligules oblong, 

 elongated, thin, broad and conspicuously laciniate at the apex. 

 Petioles broad and thin, plano-convex or slightly concave on the 

 upper side, rounded on the lower, armed irregularly with broad 

 thin large and small, straight and hooked spines confluent into a 

 thin bright orange-coloured cartilaginous margin, gradually enlarged 

 at the base into the thick elongated broad concave light bright 

 chestnut-brown vaginas composed of a network of thin strong 

 fibres. Spadix interfoliar, paniculate, elongated, pedunculate, 

 glabrous, its numerous branches flexuose and pendulous ; spathes 

 numerous, narrow, elongated, glabrous. Flowers minute, white, 

 articulate on thickened disk-like pedicels in the axils of ovate 

 acute scarious bracts, slender and acuminate before anthesis. 

 Calyx tubular, indurate at the base, gradually enlarged and slightly 

 3-lobed at the apex, scarious, persistent under the fruit, the lobes 

 retuse, scarious, erose, imbricated in gestivation. Corolla funnel- 

 shaped, the fleshy tube included in the calyx, half as long as the 

 lanceolate acute striate lobes, thickened and glandular on the inner 

 surface at the base, reflexed, imbricated in Eestivation, deciduous. 

 Stamens 6, inserted on the throat of the corolla ; filaments of the 

 stamens opposite the lobes of the petals consolidated with them for 

 nearly ^ their length and much thicker than the free filaments 

 opposite the sinuses ; anthers linear-oblong, attached on the back, 

 versatile, pale yellow, 2-celled, the cells spreading below, opening 

 longitudinalljr. Ovary superior sessile on a thick disc, depres- 

 sed — obovoid, o-lobed, 3-celled, crowned by an elongated flexuose 

 exserted white horny style stigmatic at the apex ; ovule solitary in 

 each cell, lateral, erect, anatropous. Fruit baccate, small, ellipsoidal, 

 1 -celled, 1 -seeded, short-stalked, crowned with the remnants of the 

 abortive carpels and of the style ; pericarp of 2 coats, the outer 

 thin, dry, black, and fleshj^, the inner membranaceous, dark 

 orange-coloured, lustrous on the inner siirface. Seed free, erect, 



