PALME. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 3] 
OREODOXA REGIA. 
Royal Palm. 
SPADIX puberulous. Fruit oblong-obovate. Pinne linear, acuminate. Stem en- 
larged near the middle. 
Oreodoxa regia, Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. St. Croix and the Virgin Islands). — Chapman, F7. ed. 2, 
et Spec. i. 305 (1815). — Kunth, Syn. Pl. Hquin. i. 307 ; Suppl. 651. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census 
Linum. iii. 182. — Martius, Hist. Nat. Palm. iii. 168, t. U. S. ix. 218. — Beccari, Reliquie Schefferiane, 147, 
156, f. 3-5.— Spach, Hist. Vég. xii. 68. — Roemer & ti. 
Schultes, Syst. vii. pt. ii. 1491. — A. Richard, Fl. Cud. iii. CHnocarpus regius, Sprengel, Syst. ii. 140 (1825). 
276. — Ill. Hort. ii. 28, t.— Walpers, Ann. v. 807.— Oreodoxa oleracea (?), Cooper, Smithsonian Rep. 1860, 
Grisebach, 77. Brit. W. Ind. 517. — Sauvalle, Fl. Cud. 440 (1861). 
153. — Eggers, Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 18, 100 (Fi. 
A tree, from eighty to one hundred feet in height, with a trunk rising from an abruptly enlarged 
base, gradually tapering from the middle to both ends and often two feet in diameter, covered with 
light gray rind tinged with orange-color, marked with regular dark blotches and irregularly broken 
into minute plates, and surmounted with a slender dark green and lustrous cylinder eight or ten feet 
in length. The leaves are ten or twelve feet long, closely pmmnate with numerous linear acuminate 
pinne which are longest near the base of the leaf, where they are from two and a half to three feet 
in length and an inch and a half in width, and gradually decrease in size toward the apex of the leaf; 
they are deep green, with slender rather conspicuous veins, and covered on the lower surface with 
minute pale glandular dots, and are inserted obliquely on the upper side of the rachis; this is convex 
on the back and covered by dark scurfy scales, and nearly flat on the upper side, although slightly 
concave between the central and the prominent marginal ridges at the base, and, gradually decreasing 
in width from below upward, becomes thin and acute at the apex of the leaf; the petioles are almost 
terete, except at the base, where they become concave with thin edges separating irregularly into pale 
fibres as they enlarge into the bright green cylindrical clasping bases which are eight or nine feet in 
length and more or less thickly covered on the back with dark chaffy scales. The spadix is about 
two feet long, with a nearly terete peduncle an inch in diameter and slightly ridged longitudinally, 
and primary and secondary branches compressed above, abruptly enlarged at the base, concave on the 
upper side and convex on the lower, the flower-bearing branchlets being simple, slender, terete except 
at the very base, flexuous, long-pointed, from three and a half to five inches long, pendent, and 
rather closely pressed against the secondary branches. The flowers, which in Florida open in January 
and February, are subtended by triangular subulate caducous membranaceous white bracts and are 
bibracteolate with minute triangular bractlets, the staminate flowers being nearly a quarter of an inch 
in length and rather more than twice as long as the pistillate. The fruit is oblong-obovate, full and 
rounded at the apex, narrowed at the base, which is surrounded by the remnants of the perianth of the 
flower, violet-blue, and about half an inch long, with a thin outer coat and a light red-brown inner 
coat loose and fibrous on the outer surface and closely investing the thin light brown testa of the seed, 
which is covered at the base by the numerous pale radiating branches of the star-like raphe. 
In Florida Oreodozxa regia inhabits hummocks on Rogue’s River, about twenty miles east of 
Caximbas Bay, Long’s Key off the southern coast, and the shores of Bay Biscayne, near the mouth of 
Little River! It is common in Cuba and other West Indian islands, and in Central America. 
1 Garden and Forest, ix. 152, f. 21. 
