101 
A RARE PALM FROM CUBASIN. THE 
CONSERVATORIES 
Charles Wright, of New England, who became the best known 
collector of plants in Cuba, found in the eastern end of the 
island: during our Civil War a palm which was subsequently 
named Thrinax crinita, now known as Coccothrinax crinita, 
His collections were sent to different institutions, and at present 
there is some of this original collection of the palm at Kew 
Gardens, near London, and at the New York Botanical Garden. 
Until quite recently no living specimen was known, and in fact 
the palm had become one of the many species lost to science. 
Dr. Beccari, of Florence, perhaps the greatest modern student 
of the palms, writes that “the specimens upon which the species 
is founded consist only of leaves and portions of the fibrous net 
resting at the base of the petiole (leaf-stalk) and composed of 
very fine brown filaments. This is perhaps another of the palms 
growing only in the east of the island,” 
In t915 Mr. John Lewis Childs offered as a loan to the Garden 
a palm which he said was Thrinax crimta from Cuba. ‘The sur- 
prise,and delight that such a rare palm was coming into our 
collection was very nearly matched by our incredulity that this 
plant of which only herbarium specimens over sixty years old 
were known, could come through a commercial florist and 
nurseryman, rather than from an elaborate exploration trip of 
scientific men. 
But Coccothrinax crinita the palm undoubtedly is, and from 
all the fan-leaf palms of Cuba it is distinguished by the great 
amount of hoary filaments on the trunk which the illustration 
shows. Comparison with the original material of Charles 
Wright at the New York Botanical Garden shows that our speci- 
men is identical with the original. 
Mr. Childs has kindly turned over to us his record of how the 
plant came into his hands. On March 17, 1894, R. D. Hoyt, of 
Clearwater, Florida, found two specimens of it in an abandoned 
coffee plantation about twelve miles northwest of San Cristobal, 
Province of Pinar del Rio. It was “identified from specimens 
\ 
