392 Pomona College Journal of Economic Botany 



crown of the leaves. This palm prows in tufts of several stems of unequal 

 age, but I do not know whether these are produced by off-shoots springing 

 from the base of the older stems, or whether they are independent plants 

 developed from the innumerable seeds, which drop around the mother plants. 

 The stem is rather slender, erect and straight and possibly would remain for 

 a very long time, perhaps for its life time, clothed by the dead leaves, if 

 these were not cut away by man or burnt off by the fires of the savannahs, 

 where this palm grows; in every case the trunk remains covered entirely and 

 permanently down to the very base with the stumps of petiole bases arranged 

 in gentle spirals. 



Figure 154. Acoelorhaphe wrightii. a, portion of a flowering branchlet; b, full 

 grown unopened flower; c, flower during the anthesis; d, fruit; e, kernel; f, seed 

 as seen from the raphal side; g, seed cut longitudinally through the embryo, 

 a, b, and c, from a specimen collected by Combs at Cieneguita; d, e, and f, from 

 a plant cultivated at Buitenzorg, Java. 



A special feature of Acoelorhaphe is the long spadices, which spring 

 straight upwards above the crown of leaves. Each is decomposed into 

 several rather distantly superposed branches or partial panicles, crowded, 

 at first, with innumerable and very small flowers and afterwards with small 

 round fruits. 



The type specimens of A. wrightii are those of the "Plantse Cubenses 

 Wrightiana;" n. 3207. 



From plants growing at Herradura, in the Province of Pinar del Rio, 

 were taken the specimens distributed under n. 4208. 



A. wrightii, very slightly changed in its characters, grows, also, in 

 Honduras, and at Nueva Gerona in the small island, Isla de Pinos. Of this 

 latter, I made the variety Novo geroneusis (Webbia 1. c. p. 113). It is 

 ■probably not specifically distinct from the plant of Cuba or the Acoelorhaphe 



