230 
BECCARI. 
which at its summit is 7-9 'em. broad; the margins of those portions 
between two indentations are straight and almost smooth in their lower 
part, but otherwise they are sharply dentato-serrate and almost spinulous ; 
just at the base, the leaflets have their lower margin lengthened into 
a short and rounded ear-like lobe, while this is wanting in the upper 
margin; the mid-costa is very robust, much morb prominent on the 
lower than on the upper surface; the secondary nerves are very numer- 
ous and very slender and do not run parallel to the mid-costa but 
slightly diverge from it, giving to both surfaces, but especially to 
the lower one, a finely striate appearance ; both surfaces are glabrous, 
but the lower one is slightly paler than the upper, and in the young 
leaves looks as if it were covered with a very tenuous and adherent 
ashy indumentum which disappears with age; near the summit of the 
leaf the rachis is very slender and laterally flattened and the leaflets 
are shorter and more obtuse than the lower ones; the terminal leaflet 
is flabellate-cuneiform and unequally 3-lobed at its summit, being 
apparently formed by the union of 3 leaflets. The spadix (which I have 
not seen entire) is, from what I can judge, composed of an axial 
part carrying several simple spreading branches, which when the male 
flowers are full grown and the female one scarcely visible, are 6-7 mm. 
thick in their basal part and narrower higher up ; but later when the 
same branches are covered with sessile, horizontal and spirally arranged 
fruits they attain the thickness of 17 mm. and the length of 70 cm., 
are terete, glabrous and wrinkled in the spaces between the fruits. The 
full grown male -flowers, when not yet open, are ovoid, distinctly apic- 
ulate, 15 mm. long; the calyx is shortly cupular, its sepals are broader 
than high, with round glabrous and entire margins and are more or 
less gibbous-calcarate at the base ; the petals are ovate-elliptical, concave 
or boat-shaped, distinctly apiculate; the stamens are about 100 (those 
of the center apparently abortive), their anthers are very narrowly 
linear subulate-aristate. Female flowers Fruiting perianth 
2.5 cm. across, formed by coriaceous and also very dark colored segments, 
of which the sepals are narrowly lunate and strongly crenate on the 
margin and the petals broadly triangular, at least 3 times as long as 
the calyx, thickened and obscurely keeled on the back and with their 
margin entire or 2-3 dentate and sometimes more or less cleft at the 
apex. The fruit is globular, slightly depressed, 3 cm. in diameter 
slightly concave in its upper part, where there are 3 prominent lines 
radiating from 3 small central clefts, the remains of the stigmas. When 
the fruits have fallen the place of their insertion on the branches is 
marked by large and circular scars, 12-13 mm. in diameter, surrounded 
by 2 very narrowly lunate, blackish or dark chestnut brown coriaceous 
bracts, which together form a slightly concave or pateriform ealieulum. 
The seeds are 3 in each fruit, but those seen by me were not quite 
mature. 
