170 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



bers of the order, for your speaker is 

 fairly committed to the view that there 

 is a general, though not infallible, con- 

 formity between botanical and medicinal 

 relationships. 



Our plant belongs to the Coryphse, 

 which is Bentham's third tribe of the 

 Palmse, characterized by flabellate leaf- 

 vernation, usually hermaphrodite flowers, 

 one to three distinct carpels to the non- 

 scaly fruit, a pericarp which is not 

 strongly fibrous and a dorsal embryo. It 

 occurs therefore near the middle of the 

 sequence of 132 genera, while the Areca 

 is the very first genus, with re-duplicate 

 leal-vernation, imperfect flowers, a thick, 

 dry, fibrous pericarp and a sub-basal 

 tmbryo, and Cocos is almost the last 

 genus, also with re-duplicate leaf-verna- 

 tion, monoecious flowers, thick, dry, 

 fibrous pericarp, and the embryo placed 

 opposite to the conspicuous pores of the 

 seed. The third member of the group, 

 Calamus, belongs rather near to the-Saw-- 

 Palmetto, so far as botanical sequence is 

 concerned, yet, cannot be said to be 

 closely related thereto as it has a distinctly 

 scaly fruit, with entirely different chemi- 

 cal products, and grows in an entirely 

 different quarter of the globe. The only 

 medicinal plant which is really closely 

 related to that under consideration is the 

 Copernicia cerifera or Carnauba, of Para- 

 guay, with a domestic repute as an altera- 

 tive and diuretic, used much as sarsa- 

 parilla is used, but these properties are not 

 yet verified in scientific practice. Its leaves 

 yield an astonishing amount of wax 

 which finds a certain degree of commer- 

 cial value. The classification ofDrude, 

 in Kngler and Prantl," does not differ 

 materially in these relations. 



From this it will appear that botanical 

 relationship furnishes us no warrant for 

 assuming medicinal virtues in the Saw- 

 Palmetto and we must seek for them in 

 its individual history, composition and 

 properties. 



HABIT AND APPEARANCE. 



Its most nothern locality is South 

 Carolina, where it grows sparingly along 

 the coast, becoming more abundant 

 southward until, in its favorite Florida 

 locality, from Mosquito Inlet to Jupiter's 

 Inlet, it forms a dense mass of vegetation 

 over a strip of ground 150 miles long by 

 one to three miles wide, unbroken except 

 by the intervening bodies of water with 

 their fringe of oaks (according to account 

 of J. B. Read), and impenetrable except 

 by virtue of the cutting of roads. To- 

 ward the ocean this belt is directly limit- 

 ed by the action of the waves, and upon 

 this border it exhibits its densest growth. 

 Inland its border fades out gradually, 

 the plant giving place to other vegetation 

 with which it is intermingled in variable 

 proportions. From here it extends in a 

 more or less broken belt around the Gulf 

 coast, through Georgia and Florida, and 

 it is said even into Texas. The limita- 

 tions of the fruiting area are very peculiar 

 and interesting and are not yet explain- 

 ed. Although flowering and fruiting are 

 of course known to occur over the most, 

 if not the whole of the area, this — es- 

 pecially the fruiting — is exceptional out- 

 side of certain portions of the belt. Thus 

 Mr. E. W. Amsden, of Ormund, reports 

 that in that neighborhood and for many 

 miles distant therefrom, the growing belt 

 is a thousand feet in width, while the 

 fruiting belt is confined to a strip of two 

 hundred feet, occupying the hollow or 

 furrow between the two sand ridges to- 

 ward the ocean. He estimates that the 

 fruiting plants represent less than one per 

 cent, of the whole. Mr. Amsden's de- 

 scription of the appearance and habits of 

 the plant is the best that I have seen and 

 I copy it entire from the manuscript with 

 which he has furnished me. 



' ' The trunk is horizontal and subter- 

 ranean, at a depth of from two to four 

 feet, two to thirteen feet long, six to eight 



