276 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXIII. 



Cultivation m Europe. — Heterosjjatha eloia is an elegant stove 

 palm with a graceful spreading habit, and remarkable for the ieng-th 

 of the tapering segments of its pinnate fronds. 



It thrives in rich sandy loam and leaf mould, and ma}^ be 

 propagated by imported seeds. 



Illustration : Plate LXIV shows a middle-sized specimen of 

 Heteros'paihaelcda, growing in the Sibpm- Botanic Garden. The 

 photograph was kindly supplied by Major Gage. 



ROSGHEBIA, H. Wendl. lUustr. Hort. (1871) t. 54. 



(So called after Albrecht Roscher, traveller in southern East 

 Africa, born in 1836 at Ottensen near Hamburg, and killed in 1860 

 at Hisonguny, a village not far from the Nyassa.) 



Bak. El. Maurit. p. 386. Benth. & Hook. Gen. PI. III. 913.— 

 Drude, Palmae, in Nat. Pfl. II, 3 p. 69. 



Erect slender palms ; stem armed with spines. Leaves terminal, 

 pinnate. 



Flowers monoecious, minute, solitary or in 2-flowered clusters, 

 one female below and slightly on one side of one male, spirally 

 arranged on the very slender branches of a compoundly-branching 

 spadix in the axil of a leaf with a long compressed glabrous peduncle. 

 Spathes several, smooth, complete. Male flowers : Perianth very 

 minute. Stamens 6, included, united into a ring. Rudimentary 

 ovary a column as long as the stamens, capped by a triquetrous 

 disk. Female flowers : Staminodes forming a minutely-toothed cup 

 or 0. Ovary 1-, rarely 2-3-locular; ovule parietal, pendulous. 



Fruit fusiform, 1-, very rarely 2-seeded, stigma subbasilar; peri- 

 carp thin-fleshy, fibrous ; endocarp crustaceous, seed obliquely 

 ascending, globose or elliptical ; hilum small, orbicular, basilar; raphe 

 spreading from the base, its branches anastomosing on the side op- 

 posite the hilum ; albumen loosely ruminate ; embryo basal. 



Species — 1. 



R08GHEBIA MELANOCH^TJES, Wendl. ex Baker Fl. 

 Maurit. 387. 



Verschaffeltia melanochcetes, Wendl. in Illustr. Hort. (1871) t. 54. 



Dypsis gracilis, Bory ex Mart. Hist. Nat. Palm. Ill, 181, in nota 

 sub Bypsis hirtula, et t. 161, f. 5. 



Regelia melanochcetes, Hort. ex Salomon Palmen (1887) 111. 



Names. — German : Schwarzborstige Roscheria. 



French: Latanier Haubaum (ex Baker). 



Description. — Palm 15-25 feet high, with many aerial roots 

 and a stem of 2-3 inches in diameter, with a ring of spines when 

 young below each leaf-scar. Leaves long petioled, 4|-7 feet 

 long, first bifid and then uneqiially pinnatisect; petiole l^-2-| feet 



