Beccari and Rock — Pritchardia. 51 



specimens; whole pericarp 4-5 mm. thick; mesocarp grumous and permeated by 

 rather numerous, sinuous, branched fibers ; endocarp about i mm. thick all around, 

 but thicker at the base, the endocarpal cavity nearly polished white. Seeds spher- 

 ical about 3 cm. through; hilum orbicular, 12-14 ™™- i" diameter; embryo placed 

 a little above the base. The immature fruit is oblong. Fruiting perianth callous, 

 depressed, 5 mm. broad, 2 mm. high. 



Habitat. — I hope to have correctedly identified this old species first dis- 

 covered by Gaudichaud in the Hawaiian Islands, with the specimens of a palm col- 

 lected by Professor Rock, in May, 1918, on the north coast of Molokai and 

 growing on the cliffs of the Waialeia gorge, immediately above the leper colony 

 of Kalaupapa, at an elevation of about 750 m. (Rock No. 14074). Professor 

 Rock writes to me that he observed the same palm also on the rock islets off the 

 precipitous cliffs whence he obtained his specimens, but he was unable to land on 

 the islet owing to the rough sea. There is not the shadow of a doubt, however, 

 that such islets must once have been part of the overhanging cliffs and that the 

 palms growing thereon were derived from the heights above. It was on these 

 islets that Lydgate collected the fruit, of which I have given a figure in 

 "Malesia" III. b. XXXVIII. f. 11-13, and which corresponds exactly to those of 

 Rock's specimens. That this Molokai palm is really one of the two collected by 

 Gaudichaud in the Hawaiian Islands is extremely probable, in consideration of the 

 fact that clumps of it are plainly visible from the sea, and very likely had been 

 noticed by the naturalists of the "Bonite." 



Observations. — Professor Rock, in a letter regarding the palm in question, 

 says that the fruits of P. Gaudichaudii "germinate readily, as the ground below 

 the old palms is a mass of young ones." And it is not perhaps too rash to fancy 

 that the palm of which Gaudichaud took living specimens and, in his herbarium, 

 recorded, was smaller than Pr. Martii, was growing in the places and under the 

 conditions mentioned by Rock. But the best argument for the identification of 

 Pr. Gaudichaudii with the palm of the cliff of Molokai, rests on the perfect corre- 

 spondence of the nature of the indument that covers the lower surface of the leaves 

 of the type specimens with that covering those collected by Rock. Gaudichaud's 

 type specimens of Pr. Gaudichaudii consist only of leaves of very young plants, 

 and have the peculiar tawny color shown also by those recently gathered. Pro- 

 fessor Rock remarks also that this species has a different aspect from the other 

 Pritchardias by reason of its small stature and rigidity, probably a consequence of 

 the exposed location in which it grows. Pr. Gaudichaudii is especially character- 

 ized by its large spherical fruit, and by the leaves, which have the lower surface 

 not completely covered with relatively large, scale-like hyaline narrow and long 

 lepidia. As a subsidiary character may also be mentioned the brown color 

 acquired in the herbarium specimens by the lower surface of the leaves, and also 

 by the flowers. 



