Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 6 (1802).djvu/387

Dr. J. E. Smith's Description of the Fruit of Cycas revoluta. stalks. A simple circle of about 40 evergreen pinnate leaves crowns the summit, forming a magnificent bason, whose margin measures 10 or 12 feet across, and 5 or 6 feet in height above the level of the bark bed of the stove. On mounting a ladder we beheld in the bottom of this verdant and shining amphitheatre a circular cluster, perhaps 18 inches wide, of above an hundred orange-coloured downy oval fruits, intermingled with innumerable palmate, pale brown, thick and woolly leaves or fronds, each of whose finger-like segments was tipped with a sharp spine. With respect to its earlier state, the Bishop has informed me, that on his arrival at Farnham early in September, the gardener informed his lordship the Cycas "had borne a singular appearance during summer." On inspection, the crown of the plant was found occupied by the above mentioned woolly leaves, then beautifully laciniated though not spinous, and having the appearance of a firobilus or cone, hollow like a bird's nest, and filled with a quantity of green drupe, about the size of half-grown apricots, and intermixed with the same kind of downy greyish leaves that surrounded them. The changes which had taken place from that time to the period of my arrival were, that the whole cluster of fronds and fruit had become rather convex than concave, the fronds were browner, fpines had grown at the tip of each of their lengthened segments, and the drupe: were become nearly as large as a moderate sized apricot, and further resembled that fruit in their rich orange hue and downy surface.

On separating some of these woolly leaves, they were found to be true fronds. Each was from 6 to 8 inches long, fleshy, entirely clothed with pale brown woolly down; their lower part a flattish stalk; their middle bearing on each margin a row of 3 or four sessile drupe, their extremity dilated into a pinnatifid, or rather palmate, many-fingered leaf, whose lobes were generally curved inwards, and tipped with a spine as before mentioned. When wounded, these fronds distilled