PALMAE 487 



933. Cocos L., and 934. Syagrus Mart. 

 Species of these genera are anemophilous (Delpino, op. cit.). 



935. Phoenix L. 



zgoi. P. dactylifera L. — This species is anemophilous. The ancient 

 Assyrians probably understood artificial pollination of the female flowers by pollen 

 from the male cones. (E. B. Tylor, ' Fertlsn. of the Date -Palm in Ancient 

 Assyria'; C. Sterne, Prometheus, II, pp. 675-8.) 



936. Chamaerops L. 



2go2. C. humilis L.— This species is anemophilous. In the year 1751, 

 Gleditsch (Hist. Acad., Berlin, (1749) 1750, pp. 103-8) described an experiment on 

 the artificial pollination of the Palma dactylifera folio flabelliformi, by which we under- 

 stand this palm. Gleditsch says (Sachs, ' History of Botany,' p. 393), ' " Our palm in 

 Berlin is a female, and may be 80 years old ; the gardener asserts it has never borne 

 fruit, and I have myself never seen fertile seeds on it during fifteen years." As there 

 was no male tree of the kind in Berlin, Gleditsch procured some pollen from the 

 garden of Caspar Bose in Leipsic. In the course of the nine days' journey, the 

 greater part of the pollen escaped from the anthers, and Gleditsch feared that it 

 was spoilt ; but he was re-assured by the Leipsic botanist Ludwig, who had had 

 experience in Algiers and Tunis, that the Africans usually employ dry pollen that 

 has been kept for some time for the purpose of fertilisation. Though the flowering 

 of the female tree was nearly over, he strewed the loose pollen on its flowers, and 

 tied the withered inflorescence of the male plant to a late blowing shoot of the 

 female. The result was that fruit ripened in the following winter, and germinated 

 in the spring of 1750. A second attempt conducted in a similar manner produced 

 an equally favourable result.' 



CXIX. ORDER TYPHACEAE JUSS. 



Literature. — Knuth, ' Bl. u. Insekt. a. d. nordfr. Ins.,' p. 139; Engler and 

 Prantl, 'Typhaceae,' in ' D. nat. Pflanzenfam.,' II, i, p. 185. 



Monoecious wind flowers, arranged in capitate or cylindrical spikes. The male 

 flowers, which are situated above, mature later than the female ones below. Engler 

 and Prantl describe Typha and Sparganium as protandrous. 



937- Typha L. 



Monoecious protogynous wind-flowers, arranged in cylindrical spikes. 



2903. T. latifolia L. (Knuth, loc. cit. ; Kronfeld, Bot. Centralbl., Cassel, 

 xxxix, 1889, p. 21.) — The male flowers of this species do not dehisce until the 

 stigmas have shrivelled, and still contain pollen when the female flowers have set 

 fruits. Kronfeld observes that this species tends to produce unisexual plants, and 

 that Dietz observed a purely male specimen in the Pesth Botanic Garden. Warnstorf 

 describes the sulphur-yellow pollen-masses as being up to 50 /i in diameter. 



