110 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
that the female flowers are tinged with green at the 
base, but are usually entirely yellow coloured. 
Dr. Oxley recommends the destruction of the 
hermaphrodite trees, as giving an inferior product, and 
this, I think, is advisable. 
The male trees are usually exterminated by the 
native planter as soon as they have developed enough 
to show their flowers, and so become distinguishable. 
The tree takes about seven years to grow before the 
sex is discoverable by the flowers, and a planter may 
have the mortification to discover, after long years 
of patient cultivation, that too many of his plants are 
males. All kinds of ideas have therefore sprung up as 
to the possibility of distinguishing the future sex of the 
plant by the form of the seed or seedling. The Malays 
aflirm that the male seeds are rounder in the back, and 
those that will become females are flatter. The Chinese 
say that seed with rounded backs produce female, and 
those with a ridge on the back male trees. 
Prestoe, who studied the plant in Trinidad, said 
that he could tell the sexes by the foliage, even in the 
seedlings. The male has leaves broader towards the 
point than in the middle, with a much longer point, 
with the veins much more roundly curved in towards ^ 
the tip than in the female, which has more perfectly 
elliptical leaves with straighter nerves. I find in 
Singapore something similar, but, as the leaves vary 
very much on the same tree, and, as Prestoe remarks, 
one may find elliptical leaves on the male tree and 
obovate leaves on the female trees, it is not very easy 
to distinguish the sexes by the leaves with absolute 
certainty. Planters of experience may, however, dis- 
tinguish them more or less accurately by eye. 
The adult flowering, or at least well-grown, male 
may be distinguished by its more straight branches and 
narrower or smaller leaves, but even that is not certain. 
In the Malacca plantations this was rather well marked, 
and male trees could be distinguished at some distance, 
but I found here the difference in general appearance 
