34 The Palms of British East India. 



Hab. — Pegu. Revd. F. Carey. Male plant introduced 

 into these Gardens in 1810, in which Buxoo informs me it 

 has been called C. hostilis. 



Descr. — A very elegant Palm (in some cases stoloniferous,) 

 forming at the base, apparently from off- sets, very thick leafy tufts 

 from which arise elegant stems, fifteen-twenty feet high, 2|- inches in 

 diameter, annulated ; internodes seven inches long, green. Crown 

 elegant, of ascending, gracefully curved leaves. 



Petioles for two or three feet from the base highly armed with large 

 black flat spines, intermixed with small ones in oblique often nearly 

 complete series, spreading in every direction ; in the pinniferous 

 part trigonal, covered with whitish scurf, armed underneath with 

 nearly complete verticils of spines. Spines, solitary or in pairs, also 

 exist on the upper angle towards the base of the pinniferous part. 

 Pinna very spreading, alternate or often sub- opposite, rather dis- 

 tant, linear-lanceolate, largest eighteen-twenty inches long, ten- 

 eleven lines broad, acute, or acuminate into a cirrhose bristle, dark 

 green, shining above, white below ; central vein above sub-carinate, 

 from the middle upwards on both sides furnished with distant stout 

 bristles, margins very bristly and pungent, as also are the points, 

 which are sometimes bifid. 



Spadices about five feet long, pendulous ; much attenuated towards 

 the apex, peduncles, where naked, smooth, compressed, greenish, 

 shining. Spathes four-six inches long, tubular, clavate, with split 

 erect limbs two-three inches long, often blackened, withered, armed 

 with scattered spreading black spines, except the uppermost which 

 are nearly or quite unarmed. Lower flowering branches often de- 

 compound, 2-3 feet in length, upper simple, their spathes short, un- 

 armed, split, blackened. Spikes five- six inches long, (younger ones 

 rather flattened,) with a tendency to be gyrate ; direction of flower- 

 ing inverted. Bractece rather closely imbricated. 



Flowers rather large, greenish, oblique, surrounded at the base by 

 a short cup concealed in the bracte, oblique in front, emarginate and 

 sub-bicarinate behind. Calyx scarcely longer than the bracte, ovate, 

 and 3-partite to the middle, not striate ; segments slightly scurfy. 

 Corolla three times longer than the calyx, down to which it is divided 



