476 [April 18, 
Branner.] 
are concerned, the growth of the whole stem is at an end. In fact, how- 
ever, the stem does continue to grow to acertain distance below the phylo- 
phore, but this growth is lateral and not longitudinal, A palm trunk 
may grow laterally as long as the fibro-vascular bundle divisions of the 
given part are in connection with active fronds.* It is plain, then, that 
there can be no longitudinal growth below the lowest active fronds. But 
in regard to lateral growth, there is no practical line of demarkation be- 
tween the full-grown and growing parts of a trunk, because full-grown 
and growing parts overlap each other. Theoretically the growth has 
ceased below the lower extremity of the bundle divisions connected with 
the lowest active fronds. Practically it varies much with the species, age, 
vitality and circumstances of the individual. 
Being impossible below the fronds, longitudinal growth is necessarily 
confined to the phylophore or part above the lowest active frond. We 
may therefore naturally expect to find palms that have long phylophores 
attaining considerable heights, and having the internodes long. In almost 
all young palms, whatever the species, we find the phylophore very much 
longer than in full grown ones of the same kind, and the internodes 
longer in the same proportion. The young Mauritia flewwosa has its active 
fronds covering it down the trunk four or five times as far as an old indi- 
vidual of the same species, and the same is true ofall the palms I can now 
call to mind. But this long phylophore gradually shortens with age, while 
the internodes shorten in the same proportion, and the fronds have a more 
decided drooping. In genus Desmoncus the trunk is covered with active 
fronds for a large part of its whole length, or, in other words, it is nearly 
all phylophore, and, as might be expected, we find it attaining enormous 
lengths,+ with a very slender stem and long in ternodes, in comparison to its 
size. The length of the phylophore in this genus, as compared to its size, 
has caused it to assume the habit of a clambering or climbing palm. It 
reaches so great a length before any of its fronds cease to be active, that 
is, before any of its fibro-vascular bundles harden, that it is incapable of 
sustaining its own weight. If an Assat (Huterpe oleracea) palm retained 
its fronds active to the same length proportionally that Desmoncus does, it 
would grow to be about a hundred feet long before its fibro. vascular 
bundles hardened near the base, and the result would be that it would 
fall over and become a clambering palm. The slender trunk alone of 
Desmoncus ig not sufficient to account for its habit, for it falls over 
while it is still a mere shoot, not more than three or four feet in length. 
Then too there are many palms even. more slender than Desmoneus, palms 
* Sachs (Text-Book, p, 552), says that ‘‘each portion of the stem, when once 
formed, maintains the thickness which it had already attained within the bud 
near the apex of the stem.” There may be some palms of which this is nearly 
true, but it is far from being true in all cases, while it leaves the swelling of 
spindle-shaped trunks as badly accounted for as do the explanations of M. 
Mirbel. 
+I have seen this palm over thirty metres long with a stem but little more 
than one centimetre in diameter. 
