116 cook: a new genus of palms BOTANY. — A new genus of palms allied to Archonio'phoenix. O. F. Cook, Bureau of Plant Industry. Apart from the several species of Phoenix and Cocos, only one pinnate-leaved palm is commonly planted in the open air in California. This is usually known as Seaforihia ele-gans, but has also been called Ptychosperma elegans, Archonto-phoenix alexandrae, and Archontophoenix cunninghamiana. As these names belong to other species they should not be applied to the palm grown in California. Reference of the plant in question to Ptychosperma or Seaforthia is excluded because the seeds are not sulcate. In this respect there is agreement with Archontophoenix, but other characters are divergent. One cause of confusion is that characters given by Drude, in Engler and Prantl's Natilrlichen Pflayizenfajnilien, as diag-nostic of Archontophoenix are not found in the type of that genus, A. alexandrae. These discrepancies relate to the form of the pistillode and the structure of the fruit. Acquaintance with the true Archontophoenix alexandrae was gained by the. writer in 1905, at Cordoba, Mexico, fruit and seed of an in-dividual there studied agreeing closely with Mueller's original description and figures,^ but differing from those of the familiar palm of California. For comparison with the genuine Seaforthia elegans ample material was afforded by palms studied in 1914 at the Belize Botanical Station, British Honduras. The iden-tification of the latter material led to a recognition of the fact that ,the California palm was different from all of the species to which it had been supposed to belong. Taking into account the original description of Archonto-phoenix and the characters of the type species, the pistillode should not be described as short and pyramidal in Archonto-phoenix, but as having the same slender, elongate form as in Ptychosperma and Seaforthia. Nor does the seed of the true Archontophoenix alexandrae have an adherent endocarp, as stated by Drude. The endocarp is represented in Archontophoenix by a firm, bony shell, rather thin, but hard and brittle, and 1 Fragm. Austr. 5: 47, pis. 43, U-
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