1CW TUM 



UITAMICAI. 



<)AKU£N 



TORREYA 



Vol. 32 March-April, 1932 No. 2 



The pollination of the palm ^4 rchontophoenix Cunninghamii 

 Alexander F. Skutch 



Bordering the path which led up from the tramline to the 

 front steps of the house in which I lived near Almirante, in the 

 province of Bocas del Toro in western Panama, stood six stately 

 palm trees of the species A rchontophoenix Cunninghamii, Wendl 

 and Drude. Unfortunately for the effect they produced, all were 

 not of the same age. The largest was a magnificent specimen 

 which measured 64 feet to the top of the leafy crown, and was 

 11 inches in circumference at breast height. The straight, clean, 

 columnar trunk was prominently ringed by the crowded scars 

 of the fallen leaves, and the closely encrusting lichens which 

 covered much of its surface gave it a light gray color. At the 

 upper extremity of the trunk three or four richly branched 

 spadices stood out almost horizontally, with the slender, flexu- 

 ous branches pendent beneath the thicker main axis. Above the 

 spadices the trunk appeared to be continued by a smooth, green 

 extension, about six feet long, thicker than the older portion 

 below. This apparent prolongation of the trunk was in reality 

 a false-stem made up of the tubular, concentric sheaths of the 

 leaves. From the apices of their sheaths sprang the gracefully 

 plumed fronds, which measured about 11 feet long by 6 feet 

 broad (Plate I). 



Many palms, including Archonto phoenix, the royal palm, 

 and the stilt-palm Attalea, resemble the banana in the posses- 

 sion of a prominent false-stem, but there are a number of im- 

 portant differences between the two types of plants. While the 

 false-stem of the banana at any age springs from near or below 

 the surface of the ground, at the apex of a bulbously swollen 

 rhizome, that of the palm is raised on its woody caudex, in old 

 plants, many feet above the ground. In the former the leaf- 

 sheaths which form this false-stem are open, crescentic in cross- 

 section and closely overlapping, in the latter they are closed, 



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