APPENDIX 



Flowering Trunks. — In the Bornean primeval forest the eye is often 

 struck by the singular sight, not only of plants, but trees, in which the 

 flowers, instead of showing in normal positions, appear on the cylindrical 

 portion of the trunk, or form bunches or masses at its base close to the 

 ground, or again, in rarer cases, emerge from the ground from hypogeal 

 branches. Such abnormal situations for flowers, indeed, are not unknown 

 in a few plants in other countries ; notable examples of this being the 

 American calabashes (Crescentia) , the African Omphalocarpum. and the 

 Asiatic Jack-tree (Artocarpus integrifolia) with its enormous pendant 

 fruits hanging from the trunk and the bigger branches. But in the 

 Malayan region species with flowers in abnormal positions are perhaps 

 more frequent than elsewhere, and I have noted at least fifty kinds of 

 trees and shrubs in Borneo which show this peculiarity in a marked degree. 



In Borneo we find two principal categories of plants with abnormally- 

 placed flowers ; in one these appear on the trunk, in the other on the 

 roots, or rather on underground branches, the flowers expanding just 

 above the level of the ground. Amongst the plants belonging to the 

 first series besides trees and shrubs, are not a few lianas, Leguminoscs, 

 Anonacece, many species of Gnetinn, some Ficus, several Menispermacece, 

 etc. 



The majority of those with flowers growing on the trunk are shrubs, 

 but there are also trees of great size. Amongst the latter the most 

 remarkable is Durio testu dinar um or " Durian kakura " x a singular tree, 

 for it hardly differs from the cultivated durian, except that its flowers 

 and succeeding fruits (which are about half the size of the true durian) 

 are crowded together round the knobbv trunk in great numbers on 

 a level with the ground. The very same thing was observed by me 

 in a small tree, Goniothalamus lateritiiis, Becc, already mentioned 

 (p. 233), and in a Sapotacea {Palaquium Beccarii, Pierre). There is a 

 big tree belonging to the Bixacece (Tarakto genus, P. B., Xo. 2644) which 

 produces on its trunk very hard woody fruits as round as cannon-balls, 

 four inches in diameter. I have also described another Anonacea, 

 Polyalthia anomala, 2 which I often meet with at Mattang, in which the 

 flowers always appear on excrescences at the base of the trunk. The 

 flowers of this Polyalthia are of a greenish colour and not large, but the 

 fruits which follow are very big, of a beautiful golden yellow and very 

 conspicuous, and therefore must be visible to animals even at a distance. 

 There are also some species of Polyalthia whose otherwise naked trunk 

 is for many feet literally clothed with largish flowers of a very bril- 

 liant salmon colour. These are the trees which Wallace has referred 

 to under the description of " Flowering trunks." 3 Two palms, Pinanga 

 brevipes, B., and P. crassipes, B., produce flowers and fruits on a level 

 with the ground, whilst in all the other species of the genus these grow 

 from the upper portion of the stem. 



More numerous than those with flowers growing from the trunk 

 are plants in which they develop from the larger branches ; certain species 



1 Cf., Malesia, vol. iii. 



2 Cf. Nuovo Giomale Botanico Hal., vol. iii., p. 188. 



3 Cf. Tropical Nature, pp. 34-35. 



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