PALM. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 33 
PSEUDOPHENIX. 
FLOWERS monecious; calyx of the pistillate flower cupular, 3-toothed; petals 3, 
ovate, acute; staminodia 6. Fruit drupaceous, 1 to 8-lobed. Spadix compound, 
interfoliar. Leaves alternate, pinnatifid. 
Pseudopheenix, H. Wendland, Garden and Forest, i. 352 (1888).— Drude, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. iii. 
64. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. xiii. 381. 
A tree, with an endogenous stem abruptly enlarged at the base, cylindrical, or tapering gradually 
from the middle to both ends, conspicuously marked at distances of five or six inches by the narrow 
ring-like dark scars left by the falling of the petioles, and thin pale blue or nearly white rind about one 
sixteenth of an inch in thickness. Leaves abruptly pinnatifid, terminal, alternate, erect and arching ; 
pine numerous, crowded, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, increasing in length and width from the ends of 
the leaf to the middle, springing from the rachis at acute angles, and pointing toward the apex of the 
leaf, convex and bright green on the upper side, concave and glaucous on the lower, folded together at 
the base, thick and firm in texture, with thickened pale margins, inserted obliquely on the sides of the 
rachis near its top, toward the base of the leaf in deep grooves and above the middle on its slightly 
rounded sides; rachises near the base of the leaf convex below, and concave above, with thin margins, 
gradually decreasing in width upward, and toward the apex of the leaf flat and narrow below and acute 
above, marked on the sides at the base of the pinne, with dark conspicuous gland-like excrescences ; 
petioles short, concave above, with thin entire margins separating sparingly into slender fibres, convex 
below, gradually enlarged at the base into broad thick vaginas composed of stout pale longitudinal 
brittle fibres. Spadix interfoliar, compound, pendulous, pedunculate, glabrous, light yellow-green, 
much shorter than the leaves, its primary branches spreading from the stem nearly at right angles, 
slightly zigzag, stout and much flattened toward the base, slender and terete above the middle, 
secondary branches slightly compressed below, and furnished at the base on the upper side with a 
thickened ear-like body; ultimate branches short, rigid, spreading at right angles, densely flowered. 
Spathes and flowers unknown. Fruit drupaceous, globose, or two or three-lobed by the development of 
the second and third carpels, marked on the side near the base or centrally when the fruit is lobed with 
the remnants of the style, surrounded below by the withered obscurely three-lobed calyx, the ovate- 
oblong reflexed petals rounded or acute, thickened and apiculate at the apex, as long as the peduncle, 
and the six slender spreading staminodia tipped with minute acute abortive anthers, pedunculate, the 
peduncle slender, abruptly enlarged at the bottom, articulate from a persistent cushion-like body 
apiculate in the centre, its point penetrating a cavity in the base of the peduncle; epicarp coriaceous, 
bright orange-scarlet; mesocarp grumose, adherent to the thin crustaceous brittle dark orange-brown 
endocarp. Seed subglobose, free, erect ; hilum basal, shghtly depressed ; testa very thin, light red- 
brown marked with the pale conspicuous ascending two or three-branched raphe, closely investing the 
horny white uniform albumen. Embryo minute, basilar. 
The wood of Pseudopheenix is soft and light, with a thin solid outer rim and numerous large dark- 
colored conspicuous fibro-vascular bundles. It decays as soon as it is cut. It has not been examined 
scientifically. 
Pseudophenix inhabits Elliott’s Key, where it was discovered on April 19, 1886," and Key Largo, 
Florida. 
1 Early on the morning of April 19, 1886, A. H. Curtiss, C. E. house Steamer Laurel at Mr. Henry Filer’s plantation near the 
Faxon, and C. S. Sargent landed from the United States Light- eastern end of Elliott’s Key, and found Pseudophenix growing on 
