PALMA, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 85 
COCCOTHRINAX. 
Fiowers perfect ; calyx and corolla confluent into a six-toothed perianth ; stamens 
9; ovary 1-celled; ovule basilar, erect. Fruit baceate, globose, black, and lustrous. 
Spadix interfoliar, paniculate. Leaves orbicular, or truncate at the base, petiolate, their 
petioles unarmed. 
Coccothrinax, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxvii. 87 (1899). 34 (sect. Huthrinax).— Baillon, Hist. Pl. xiii. 817 (excel. 
Thrinax, Endlicher, Gen. 253 (in part) (1836). — Meissner, sect. Hemithrinax). — Sargent, Silva N. Am. x. 49 (sect. 
Gen. 357 (in part).— Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. Euthrinaz). 
930. — Drude, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfum. ii. pt. iii. 
Small unarmed trees, with simple or clustered endogenous stems marked below by the ring-like 
sears of fallen leaves and clothed above with the long persistent petiole-sheaths, or rarely stemless. 
Leaves terminal, induplicate in vernation, alternate, orbicular, or truncate at the base, pale or silvery 
white on the lower surface, more or less deeply divided into narrow acute two-parted plicately folded 
lobes; rachis short; ligule thin, free, erect, concave, rounded or long-pointed at the apex; petioles 
compressed, slightly rounded and ridged on both sides, their margins thin and smooth, gradually 
enlarged below into elongated vaginas of coarse fibres, often forming an open conspicuous network, 
generally clothed while young with thick hoary tomentum. Spadix interfoliar, paniculate, shorter than 
the petioles, its primary branches furnished with numerous short slender pendulous flower-bearing 
secondary branchlets from the axils of scarious acute bracts; spathes numerous, tubular, papyraceous, 
two-cleft at the apex, inserted on the rachis of the panicle, each primary branch with its spathe and 
the node of the rachis below it inclosed in a separate spathe, the whole surrounded by the larger 
spathe of the node next below. Flowers perfect, solitary, minute, articulate on slender elongated 
pedicels in the axils of caducous bracts. Perianth cupular, truncate at the base, obscurely six-lobed, 
deciduous. Stamens nine, inserted on the base of the perianth, exserted ; filaments subulate, enlarged 
and barely united at the base; anthers oblong, attached on the back near the middle, introrse, two- 
celled, the cells opening longitudinally. Ovary superior, ovoid, one-celled, narrowed above into a 
slender columnar style crowned by a funnel-formed oblique stigma ; ovule solitary, basilar, anatropous ; 
micropyle sublateral. Fruit subglobose, buccate, one-seeded, crowned by the remnants of the style, 
raised on the thickened torus of the flower; exocarp at first thin, of two closely united coats, the 
outer crustaceous, bright green, the inner membranaceous, silvery white; in ripening becoming thick, 
sweet, juicy, homogeneous, black, and lustrous. Seed erect, free, depressed-globose ; testa thick and 
hard, vertically grooved, deeply infolded in the ruminate albumen; hilum subbasilar, minute, and 
obscure ; raphe hidden in the folds of the testa. Embryo lateral. 
Coccothrinax is confined to southern Florida and to the Bahama and West Indian islands. Two 
species occur in Florida; one of them is a small tree, and the other a low nearly stemless plant.! Cocco- 
thrinaz radiata? inhabits Cuba, Antigua, San Domingo, and Trinidad, and Coccothrinax argentea® 
1 Coccothrinaz Garberi, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxvii. 90 (1899). Thrinax radiata, Roemer & Schultes, Syst. vii. pt. ii. 1301 
Thrinax Garberi, Chapman, Bot. Gazette, iii. 12 (1878); Fl. ed. (1830).— Martius, Nat. Hist. Palm. iii. 257.— Grisebach, Fl. 
2, Suppl. 651. — Sargent, Silva N. Am. x. 50. Brit. W. Ind. 515 ; Cat. Pl. Cub. 221. 
Thrinax argentea, var. Garberi, Chapman, Fl. ed. 3, 462 5 Sargent, J. c. (1899). 
(1897). Thrinax argentea, Roemer & Schultes, 1. c. (1830). — Mar- 
2 Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxvii. 89 (1899). tius, 1. c. 256. — Grisebach, J. c.; 1. c. 
