80 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
very glaucous Sabal which Dr. Franceschi sent me in 1893 
from Los Angeles, California, where he found and pur- 
chased about twenty small cultivated plants, seems to rep- 
resent 8S. Uresana ; but I have been unable to connect it 
with any garden or published name. 
In foliage it is somewhat suggestive of two other ‘‘ blue 
palms ’’ of the Sonoran region, Washingtonia (or Pritch- 
ardia) Sonorae Watson,* and EHrythea armata Wat- 
son,t—from both of which it differs conspicuously in 
having the petioles without teeth, as well as in the size and 
shape of its fruit, which is usually broader than long and 
possesses the basal style and sterile carpel-rudiments, and 
the depressed seed hollowed below and with the embryo at 
one side near the top, that characterize the genus Sabal. 
The species of Sabal heretofore described are of the 
Atlantic region, from the Carolina coast to that of 
Venezuela, and in the adjacent islands. S. Mexicana 
reaches up into Hidalgo county, Texas, in longitude 98° 
west. S&S. Uresana, however, occurs twelve degrees further 
west, and is separated from all of its known congeners by 
the backbone of the continent, which, in the Sierra Madre 
range to the east of Sonora, becomes an imposing barrier 
to the movements of animals, as it appears to be to the 
dispersal of most plants. 
In later geological time, the genus Sabai, like Lirioden- 
_dron and other genera now of restricted North American 
distribution, occurred over much of this continent as well 
as in Europe, and the probability is that this westernmost 
of the species now known to exist, is the descendant of 
species which occurred in the Rocky mountain region in 
Tertiary time, rather than an offshoot from existing Atlantic 
species or their immediate ancestors. In fruit characters it 
shows a closer approach to S. Mexicana than to any other 
species of which I have been able to see the fruit. 
* Proc. Amer. Acad. 24:79 (1889). 253136, 
t Bot. Calif. 23212, 485. 
