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breadth of 30 mm., that is also the breadth of the base of the first sessile leaf. 



The leaves are firm of structure, aud they stand erecto-pateiit, somewhat 

 nutant. The colour is saturate green with a dark-purple feather-shaped 

 stripe about 10 mm. broad (including the rib) on both sides of the mid- 

 rib, which does not reach to the base of the leaf, the canaliculate rib is 

 green in the middle. In the older and, oldest leaves the hollow rib is on 

 the contrary red-brown and the spot on the parenchyma is still wanting. 

 The ligule is in the first leaves a straight band 1 mm. broad. In the 

 higher leaves it is as usually V-shaped but both the branches, forming a 

 very blunt curve, are straight, only at the edge they pass with a bow- 

 shaped line into the sheath-edge, being 3 mm. broad about the whole 

 length and coarsely ciliate. 



The scape mostly arises at the end of the dry monsoon from a small tuber 

 often at the top of a rhizome, from which also a new plant produces laterally, 

 whose base forms a new primary tuber, it varies in length from 150 — 220 mm. 



The inflorescence of a measured specimen (Hort. bog. 67: 9 = 42 H) 

 is 220 mm. long and without the scales 8 mm. thick, glabrous, the spike 

 only 180 mm. long (in other specimens 200—250). The scape is provided 

 with 5 large scales, which are narrowed towards the top, blunt, and end 

 in a mucro, which is sometimes to 15 mm. long. The innermost is (when 

 flattened) ovate-lanceolate (145 X 35), and somewhat longer than the 

 highest internode. Often the highest peduncular leaf is pouch-shaped-adnate 

 to the stem, almost 100 X 30, when flattened, without a mucro and placed 

 at distances of 40—50 mm. under the spike; in that case the last but one 

 sheath has an ovate-lanceolate top, which ends in a mucro. The lowest 

 bracts are nearly always all flower-bearing; the three lowest placed rather 

 far from each other, forming a pseudo-cycle and they are somewhat 

 larger than the higher ones. 



The spike is 160—250 mm. long and nearly 100 mm. broad at the 

 top. The bracts of which in one measured specimen are 35 in 5 more 

 or less spirally twisted parastichies around the axis, differ but a little from 

 each other in size and their transition is very gradual. The lowest are 

 broadly elliptical with an acute top; deeply canaliculately upcurved for 

 about a '/a to ^j- of the length, adnate with the edges to two bracts of 

 the higher placed whorl and outwards obliquely spreading without a decurved 

 top. They are average 50X20 — 32 long, the largest is 55 X 30, here about 

 20 mm. are adnate, when flattened the free portion is ovate-acute. Above 

 the 20th their shape becomes distinctly narrower and they pass into the 

 coma-bracts. These attain here only 55—60 min. by a breadth of 26 — 30, 

 their connexion with the bracts above them, diminishes to '/s or '/e of 

 the length, they are oblong-elliptical with an acute top, which ends in a 

 mucro and which is somewhat recurved, being themselves less incurved 



