Cook: NOMENCLATURE OF THE ROYAL. PALMS 351 
with the many other slender cespitose “ stoloniferous ” “ Euterpe” 
palms of the South American continent, rather than with any of 
the insular types. This indication of alliance is strengthened, 
moreover, by the remainder of Willdenow’s description, especially 
the tripartite style and globose longitudinally sulcate seed. The 
gamosepalous calyx, and the large woody spathe, are also char- 
acters of the related continental genus O¢wocarpus. Kunth 
described in 1815 additional species of Oreodoxa from Colombia 
(O. Sancona and O. frigida) with a tubular three-lobed calyx and 
three styles, so that these characters of Oreodoxa can scarcely be 
ignored as errors on the part of Willdenow. 
The genus Roystonea, to which the West Indian royal palms 
belong, is unique in the possession of a spherical or ovoid rudi- 
mentary pistil in the staminate flowers, while all the other related 
genera retain the more primitive character of a conical or columnar 
pistillode three-lobed at the apex. According to Willdenow and 
Kunth the true Oreodoxa of the mountains of South America is 
peculiar in having the flowers bisexual, which would represent a still 
more backward stage of development. If these authorities were in 
error they were deceived, evidently, by large three-styled pistillodes 
of the staminate flowers which would, however, be even more signi- 
ficant of the probability that the affinities of Oreodoxa do not lie 
with Roystonea, whatever be its relationships with Oenocarpus and 
other continental genera. 
There are thus many indications favoring, and none opposing, 
the opinion of Wendland, that Orecodoxa acuminata is a“ Euterpe,” 
or, to speak with more nomenclatorial circumspection, that it is a 
genus of the considerable series of American palms to which the 
name Euterpe was applied by Martius, Wendland, and others. It 
would, in other words, have been more nearly correct to have 
applied the name Orcodoxa to the mountain palm of Porto Rico 
(Acrista) than to have made it supplant Roystonea, Acrista being 
obviously nearer to the cespitose continental species of “« Euterpe” 
than are the robust and otherwise rather specialized royal palms. 
The use of the name Euterpe in the above discussion is an 
apparently necessary concession to history, though an unfortunate 
One, since it has been shown elsewhere that Euterpe has no true 
place in American botany, having been proposed originally for an 
