The great palm called "Gubbong" by the natives, a species of Corypha, is the most striking feature of the plains, where it grows by thousands and appears in three different states--in leaf, in flower and fruit, or dead.

It has a lofty cylindrical stem about a hundred feet high and two to three feet in diameter; the leaves are large and fan-shaped, and fall off when the tree flowers, which it does only once in its life in a huge terminal spike, upon which are produced masses of a smooth round fruit of a green colour and about an inch in diameter.

When these ripen and fall the tree dies, and remains standing a year or two before it falls.

Trees in leaf only are by far the most numerous, then those in flower and fruit, while dead trees are scattered here and there among them.

The trees in fruit are the resort of the great green fruit pigeons, which have been already mentioned.