Palms of British Guiana. 239 
occasionally start from the joints, but these never seem 
to develop far. The flower is very fragant ; the fruit 
oval and dark purple in colour. Flower and ripe truit 
are sometimes co-existent. 
On the Corentyn great quantities of this grow in 
damp and shady places in the forest, generally at some 
distance from the river, but probably flooded in the wet 
season. Similar masses of a hardly distinguishable, but 
generally considerably taller, Geonoma grow in similar 
places and ways on other rivers, notably on the Morooka 
in the Pomeroon district. 
SCHOMBURGK'S account of the distribution of his two 
species is: that G. acutiflora, Mart: occurs in moist 
forests on the Barima and Pomeroon, in forests near 
Roraima, and in most places on the savannahs, flower- 
ing in all these places in January and February ; and 
that G. baculifera, Kunth, occurs in moist forests in the 
Canakoo mountains, in the Humrida mountains, and in 
moist places on the savannah, flowering also in January 
and February. 
As regards its uses, dahlibanna makes, with the excep- 
tion of troolie (Manicaria) the best thatch of any of our 
palms. The leaves are strung on long straight laths, cut 
from the stem either of the booba-palm (Socratea 
exorhiza, Wend/:) or, though these are not nearly as dura- 
ble, of the manicole palm (Euterpe edulis, Mart). 
The leafstalk is bent over the lath, so that it hangs 
down on one side, the leaf on the other and is fastened 
in that position with a strip of iturite {I chno siphon) ; 
and many leaves having been thus strung side by 
side, the strip of thatch thus produced is treated 
as a tile. The advantage of this kind of thatch is that, 
