100 
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY 
[Vol. io, 
started by seed sown in situ in 1881, commenced to flower in June, and continued in blossom 
until the end of the year, being at their best in October-November [PL XII, fig. i]. 
Bauhinia anguina , a very large woody climber with peculiar alternately compressed 
chain-like stems, has this year fruited for the first time on record at Peradeniya. Trimen > 
in his Flora, states: “Very rare, flowers and fruit not seen.” 
The flowering of the giant bamboo (Dendro calamus giganteus ) is not now the rare 
event in Ceylon it used to be. Nine clumps produced flowering stems during the early 
dry months of the year. . . . None of these clumps have died. Eleven clumps of the 
“male bamboo” ( Dendrocalamus strictus ) also flowered profusely early in the year. Of 
these, five clumps have died in consequence. 
To this is to be added the interesting fact that at the same time that 
the talipot palms were blossoming in the Gardens there were counted from 
one observation point elsewhere in Ceylon two hundred talipots in flower. 
So extraordinary a concurrence of the profuse flowering of four species of 
plants, all of whose life cycles are very long—in the case of the two bamboos 
about thirty-two years, of the talipot palm nearly forty years, and of the 
liane Bauhinia so long that there is no record of it—is indeed an event that 
forces one to search for some possible environmental factor which might 
be responsible. 
The annual dry season of 1918 was in Ceylon longer than usual, suffi¬ 
ciently long to be locally termed a drought. The remarkable flowering of 
so many talipot palms throughout Ceylon and the simultaneous flowering 
of three other species of plants of long sexual periodicity was attributed to 
this drought. 
Three objections can be raised against such a deduction. First, the 
drought of 1918 was a relatively mild one. The total precipitation for the 
four months (January to April) of the dry season was, to be sure, below the 
average for this time of year (12.9 inches in 1918 as compared with a normal 
of 17.05 inches for these four months, all averages being based on twenty 
years’ records from 1901 to 1920); yet the difference is not very great. 
Furthermore, if we review the records of the years immediately preceding, 
we see that the dry season of the second year before the flowering of the 
talipots and bamboos in the Gardens was also below the average; not 
quite so low for the four months of the dry season as in 1918, but much 
lower for January, when but 1.0 inch of rain fell (in 1916) as compared with 
5.23 inches in 1918. And in February, 1916, there was but 0.03 inch of 
precipitation. One would expect these two very dry months of 1916 to 
have a more telling effect on plant life than the dry season of 1918. If we 
go further back we find that there was a drought in 1903, and again in 1905, 
of much greater severity than that of 1918, especially the latter one (1905) 
when the total rainfall for the four months January to April was the lowest 
on record for twenty years (1901 to 1920), namely, 4.9 inches or nearly 
one third that of 1918. In 1911 there occurred at Peradeniya a drought 
which, because of its duration, was more severe than any so far mentioned. 
In this year there fell during the five months of January to May but 12.78 
