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TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



2. COCCOTHRINAX, Sarg. 



Small unarmed trees, with simple or clustered stems or rarely stemless. Leaves 

 orbicular, or truncate at the base, pale or silvery white on the lower surface, divided 

 into narrow obliquely-folded segments acuminate and divided at the apex; rachises 

 narrow; ligules thin, free, erect, concave, pointed at the apex; petioles compressed, 

 slightly rounded and ridged above and below, thin and smooth on the margins, 

 gradually enlarged below into elongated sheaths of coarse fibres forming an open 

 network covered while young by thick hoary tomentum. Spadix interfoliar, panicu- 

 late, shorter than the leaf-stalks, its primary branches furnished with numerous 

 short slender pendulous flower-bearing secondary branches; spathes numerous, papery, 

 cleft at the apex. Flowers solitary, perfect, jointed on elongated slender pedicels; 

 perianth cup-shaped, obscurely-lobed ; stamens 9, inserted on the base of the perianth, 

 with subulate filaments enlarged and barely united at the base, and oblong anthers; 

 ovary 1-celled, narrowed into a slender style crowned by a funnel-formed oblique 

 stigma; ovule basilar, erect. Fruit a subglobose berry raised on the thickened torus 

 of the flower, with thick juicy black flesh. Seed free, erect, depressed-globose, with 

 a thick hard vertically-grooved shell deeply infolded in the bony albumen; hilum 

 subbasilar, minute; raphe hidden in the folds of the seed-coat; embryo lateral. 



Coccothrinax is confined to the tropics of the New World. Two species, of which 

 one is stemless, inhabit southern Florida, and at least two other species are scat- 

 tered over several of the West Indian islands. 



Coccothrinax, from k6kkgs and Thrinax, is in allusion to the berry-like fruit. 



1. Coccothrinax jucunda, Sarg. Brittle Thatch. 



Leaves nearly orbicular, the lower segments usually parallel with the petiole, thin 

 and brittle, 18'-24:' in diameter, divided below the middle of the leaf or toward its 



base nearly to the ligule, with much-thickened bright orange-colored midribs and mar- 

 gins, pale yellow-green and lustrous on the upper surface, bright silvery white and 

 coated at first on the lower surface with hoary deciduous pubescence, with thin undu- 

 late obtusely short-pointed dark orange-colored rachises, thin concave crescent-shaped 

 often oblique slightly undulate short-pointed and light or dark orange-colored ligules 



