On the modes of climbing in the genus Calamus. 
BY 
F. O. BOWER, D.Sc., 
Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow. 
With Woodcuts 1-3. 
T HE genus Calamus , belonging to the family of Palms, 
must be well known to those who have visited Eastern 
tropical jungles. The stems, which are long and very tena- 
cious, constitute the ‘ ratan cane ’ of commerce : they straggle 
through and over the other vegetation, the pliant shoot sup- 
porting itself by means of sharp reflexed prickles which present 
serious obstacles to the traveller. The growth of these plants 
is so dense and their prickles are so sharp that the Kandyan 
kings are recorded to have planted a fence of Calamus and 
other prickly climbers round their frontier forests, to which 
they trusted as a protection for their territory from the at- 
tacks of other native tribes 1 . These reflexed prickles are 
distributed over the shoot generally, but are largest, both in 
number and size, on special flagella, which project like whips 
over or among the surrounding growth of other plants, and 
after swaying freely in the wind for a time, hook on to 
stems, leaves, or even roughnesses of the bark of other 
plants, thus yielding an efficient support to the shoot which 
bears them 2 „ 
A superficial observation of the plants of this genus 
shows that the flagella are of two kinds, differing in their 
1 See Emerson Tennent, Ceylon, vol. i. p. 108. 
2 Compare Treub, Annales du Jardin botanique de Buitenzorg, vol. iii. 2 m « partie, 
p. 172. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. I. No. II. November 1887.] 
