PALM. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 29 
OREODOXA. 
FLOWERS monecious, the staminate and pistillate on the same branches of an 
infrafoliar compound spadix; staminate flowers symmetrical; stamens 6, 9, or 12, 
ovary rudimentary ; pistillate flowers smaller; staminodia 6, ovary subglobose, 2 to 
3-celled, ovule solitary, lateral, ascending. Fruit drupaceous, l-celled. Leaves alter- 
nate, equally pinnate. 
Oreodoxa, Willdenow, Mém. Acad. Berlin, sér. 2, vi. 34 Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. iii. 67. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. 
(1807). — Endlicher, Gen. 247. — Meisner, Gen. 355. — xill. 356. 
Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 899.— Drude, Engler & 
Lofty, or small and alpine, unarmed trees, with stout endogenous stems cylindrical, or swollen at the 
middle, marked for many years with the remote conspicuous scars of fallen leaves, often abruptly 
enlarged at the base, and crowned with slender bright green cylinders several feet in length formed 
by the closely imbricated sheaths of the leaf-stalks. Leaves terminal, alternate, equally pinnate, the 
pinne linear-lanceolate, long-pointed, plicately folded in estivation, unequally two-cleft, inserted 
obliquely on the upper side of the rachis, folded together at the base, their midribs and margins 
thin ; rachises convex on the back, above broad and three-ridged toward the base of the leaf and acute 
toward its apex; petioles semicylindrical, sulcate above, gradually enlarged into the thick elongated 
vaginas. Spadix large, decompound, produced near the base of the green part of the stem, its 
branches long and pendulous; spathes two, the outer semicylindrical, as long as the spadix, the inner 
ensiform, splitting ventrally, inclosing the branches of the spadix. Flowers minute, white, in a loose 
spiral, toward the base of the branch in three-flowered clusters with a central staminate and smaller 
lateral pistillate flowers, above the staminate solitary or in two-flowered clusters ; bracts and bractlets 
obscure, caducous. Calyx of the stamimate flower of three minute broadly ovate obtuse scarious 
sepals imbricated in estivation, much’ shorter than the corolla. Petals three, nearly equal, ovate, or 
obovate, acute, connate at the base, coriaceous, shghtly valvate in estivation. Stamens six, nine, or 
twelve, exserted ; filaments subulate, united below and adnate to the base of the corolla, slender and 
acute at the apex; anthers large, ovate-sagittate, attached on the back, versatile, two-celled, the cells 
free below, opening longitudinally. Ovary rudimentary, subglobose, or three-lobed. ’ Pistillate flowers 
much smaller, ovoid-conical. Sepals subreniform, obtuse, mbricated in estivation. Corolla urceolate, 
divided nearly to the middle into three acute erect lobes, incurved at the apex, valvate in estivation. 
Staminodia six, scale-like, united into a cup adnate on the mouth of the corolla. Ovary superior, 
subglobose, obscurely two or three-lobed, gibbous, two or three-celled, crowned with a thick three- 
lobed stigma, the lobes ovate, acuminate, erect, becommg subbasilar on the fruit; ovule solitary, 
ascending, attached ventrally, semianatropous ; micropyle extrorse, inferior. Fruit drupaceous, obovoid 
or oblong-ovoid, curved, one-celled; exocarp crustaceous, much thicker than the dry fibrous endocarp 
adnate to the seed. Seed oblong-reniform, marked with the conspicuous fibrous reticulate branches of 
the raphe radiating from the narrow basal hilum ; testa thin, crustaceous ; albumen uniform. Embryo 
cylindrical, minute, lateral, the radicle turned toward the base of the fruit. 
Oreodoxa is confined to the New World, where four species are now recognized. Of these Oreodo.wa 
