594 A. EF. Verrill— The Bermuda Islands. 
Although much like the Palmetto of the southern United States, 
it differs in several important particulars. It grows larger; its fruit 
is larger, more abundant, succulent, and edible; it is blackish in 
color, and about as large as a large cherry. Sometimes the clusters 
of berries are four feet long, and contain a large number of berries. 
Full grown palmettoes, even now, may become fifty feet high, 
with a spreading crown of leaves twenty-five to thirty feet across. 
The larger leaves may have a fan or blade eight feet or more long 
and nearly as wide, supported on a petiole or stem six to ten feet 
long. But most of those now growing are comparatively young, 
and mostly less than twenty feet high. 
Figure 39.—Bermuda Palmetto, moonlight effect. 
Governor Lefroy, in 1877 (Memorials, ii, p. 70, note), said that 
one then growing in the Pembroke Marsh was fifty-three feet high, 
with a clear trunk forty-seven feet high, to the lowest leaves. 
When growing in good soil in open land the trunk is sometimes 
three to four feet in circumference, and usually not more than twenty 
to twenty-five feet high, to the leaves. In the marshes it grows 
taller and more slender, the circumference seldom being over twenty- 
four to thirty inches. In dry places the trunk is irregular, with 
larger and smaller portions, varying according to the degree of dry- 
ness of different summers. The rays of the fan-like leaves run out 
into long, slender, flexible, drooping tips, when fully mature. 
