The Palms of British East India. 315 



C. elata, Roxb. FL Ind. 2, p. 176. Icones Suppt 3. t. 80. 

 Mart. Palm. p. 233. 



Hab. — Bengal, flowering in March and April : the seeds 

 require about \2 months to ripen. Bvjoor or Bujur-batool, 

 Beng. (Roxb.) Cultivated in the Botanic and some other 

 Gardens about Calcutta. I have not seen it in flower or 

 fruit. 



Descr. — " Trunk straight, but often varying in thickness. I 

 have two trees, which were pretty well ascertained to be about 

 thirty years old when in flower ; one was seventy feet to the base 

 of the inflorescence, the other about sixty ; circumference near the 

 root eight feet, and about the middle of the trees five and a half or six : 

 their whole length strongly marked with rough, dark coloured, 

 spiral ridges, and furrows, which plainly point out the spiral ar- 

 rangement of the leaves. The ligneous fibres, as in the order, 

 are on the outside, forming a tube for the soft spongy substance 

 within, of dark chocolate colour, tough and hard, but by no means 

 equal, in either quantity or quality, to the very serviceable wood of 

 Borassus flabelliformis. 



Leaves round the top of the trunk, immediately under the base of 

 the inflorescence, numerous, palmate pinnatifid, plaited, from eight 

 to ten feet each way ; segments generally from forty to fifty pair, 

 united about half their length, ensiform, apice3 rather obtuse and 

 bifid, texture hard, smooth on both sides. When the tree begins 

 to blossom, the leaves wither and soon fall off, leaving the fructiferous 

 part naked. Petioles (stipes) from six to twelve feet long, con- 

 cave above, with the thin, hard, black margins thereof cut into 

 numerous, very short, curved spines. Spathes numerous, there be- 

 ing one at each joint of the various ramifications of the spadix, all 

 smooth and when recent, of a pale yellowish green, biflorescence, 

 (spadix) terminal ; it may be called an immense, more than supra- 

 decompound, round panicle ; in this species it is of a much smaller 

 span than the leaves, and only about one-fourth or one-fifth part of 

 the whole height of the tree ; the various and innumerable ramifi- 

 cations are always alternate, smooth and of a pale yellow colour, 



