NOTE SOME BRANCHING PALMS. 251 
short distance from the ground. These can be removed without 
interfering with the growth of the main stem. Indeed I am told 
by Mr. Birdwood and other friends, who have seen this species in 
cultivation in Sind and other places, that the usual mode of pro- 
pagation is by removing these young shoots, which, when planted, 
take root and enter upon an independent existence, and in time 
themselves throw out similar shoots. 
A good specimen in Bombay is to be geen in the Elphinstone 
Circle Garden, close to the railings, a few feet to the left as you 
enter by the Western Gate. At a height of about three or four 
feet from the ground, from among the thick mass of adventitious 
rootlets which thicken the stem at its base, have sprung eight of 
these young shoots, radiating from the axis of the parent stem, to 
which four of them are still attached. The other four have been 
removed and planted in the Victoria Gardens, but only one seems 
likely to survive. Mr. Carstensen kindly showed it to me the other 
day ina large pot near the fern-house. When once it has pro- 
perly rooted, it will probably be found to thrive quicker if planted 
in the open ground, for I have found that to pot young specimens 
of the common wild species (Pheeniz sylvestris) greatly retards their 
growth. 
But these young plants thrown out by the parent tree are not 
branches in the proper sense of the word. There are, however, 
certain species of so called “ branching palms,” in which the stems 
naturally bifurcate after growing single for some distance. Some- 
times each bifurcation again divides after it has attained a certain 
height. Occasionally the operation is even again repeated in each 
of these second bifurcations. 
Such is the Doum palm of Egypt (Hyphane Thebaica), a good 
specimen of which is to be seen in the Sewree cemetery, a short 
distance from the gate on the left of the main walk as you enter. 
There, among a group of these palms with dichotomous stems, 
which I suppose found their way to the spot in the days when the 
Agri-Horticultural Society of Bombay had their head-quarters in 
the neighbourhood, is one which repeats the bifurcations in the 
manner LI have described. ; 
But besides the species in which the stems naturally divide, 
there are exceptional instances of apparent monstrosities, in which 
individuals of a species ordinarily characterized by the simple stem 
have developed a dichotomous disposition. 
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