Descr. Trunk forty to eighty feet high, cylindrical, slender, 
red-brown, marked with circular scars. Leaves in a dense 
oblong crown ; petiole spreading and decurved, spinous on the 
margins ; blade three to four feet in diameter, orbicular, cut 
to about the middle into thirty to fifty radiating slender bifid 
lobes, the acuminate points of which do not droop. Spathes 
six to ten inches long, lanceolate, compressed, acuminate, 
rigidly leathery, tomentose. Spadix three to four feet long, 
decurved, much paniculately branched, the branches and 
branchlets curved and slender, quite glabrous, rachis com- 
pressed. Mowers minute, one eighth of an inch in diameter, 
spiked upon the very slender terminal branchlets, green. Calyx 
of three short very broad obtuse segments. Corolla of three 
triangular-ovate fleshy coriaceous valvate subacute petals. 
Stamens six, filaments very broad and short ; anthers sub- 
globose. Rudimentary pistil three-cleft. Fruit globose, 
three-quarters of an inch in diameter ; pericarp thick, 
crustaceous, granular outside, with a smooth buff obscurely 
veined inner surface; remains of stigma evanescent. Seed 
globose, testa pale brown, smooth, veins invisible ; chalaza 
a brown subterminal large polished areole. Albumen very 
hard, white, not ruminate, with a broad sac-like canal 
passing from the chalaze to the centre, and full of corky 
brown tissue ; embryo dorsal above the base. — /. D. H. 
Fig. 1. Whole plant reduced ; 2, portion of male spadix of the natural size ; 3, 
portion of spadix and flowers; 4, single flower; all enlarged; 5, fruit of the 
natural size. 
