PALMA, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 41 
SABAL PALMETTO. 
Cabbage Tree. Cabbage Palmetto. 
SPADIX short. Fruit subglobose, 1-celled ; seed-coat light bright chestnut-color. 
Sabal Palmetto, Roemer & Schultes, Syst. vii. pt. ii. 1487 Corypha Palmetto, Walter, FV. Car. 119 (1788). 
(1830). — Martius, Hist. Nat. Palm. iii. 247. — Dietrich, Chamerops Palmetto, Michaux, FV. Bor.-Am. i. 206 
Syn. ii. 1201. — Kunth, Hnum. iii. 247. — Spach, Hist. (1803). — Willdenow, Spec. iv. pt. ii. 1158. — Michaux, f. 
Vég. xii. 107. — Chapman, FV. 438. — Curtis, Rep. Geolog. Hist. Arb. Am. ii. 186, t. 10. — Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. i. 
Surv. N. Car. 1860, iii. 64.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. 240. — Nuttall, Gen. i. 231. — Elliott, Sk. i. 431. — 
Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 217.— Nash, Bull. Torrey Sprengel, Syst. ii. 137. — Croom, Am. Jour. Sct. xxvi. 
Bot. Club, xxiii. 99. 315. — Loudon, Arb. Brit. iv. 2532. 
A tree, with a trunk often thirty or forty feet in height and two feet in diameter, broken by 
shallow irregular interrupted fissures into broad ridges, with a short pointed knob-like: caudex sur- 
rounded by a dense mass of contorted roots, often four or five feet in diameter and five or six feet 
deep, from which tough hght orange-colored roots, often nearly half an inch in diameter, covered 
with thick loose rind easily broken into narrow fibres, and furnished with short slender brittle rootlets, 
penetrate the soul for a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, and crowned with a broad head of leaves 
which are at first upright, then spread nearly at right angles with the stem, and are finally pendulous. 
They are wedge-shaped at the base and broad at the apex, which is recurved and deeply divided into 
narrow two-parted segments, with thin pale margins which separate into long slender threads, and 
thin light orange-colored midribs; they are thick and firm, dark green and lustrous, five or six feet 
long and seven or eight feet broad, and are borne on petioles six or seven feet in length and an 
inch and a half wide at the apex, the ligula being about four inches in length. The spadix is from 
two to two and a half feet long, with slender incurved branches, thin ultimate divisions, and thin 
secondary spathes flushed with red at the apex and conspicuously marked by pale slender longitudinal 
veins. The flowers, which are produced in the axils of minute deciduous acute bracts much shorter 
than the perianth, open in June, and are nearly a quarter of an inch across. The fruit, which ripens 
late in the autumn, is subglobose or slightly obovate, and gradually narrowed at the base, black and 
lustrous, one-seeded, raised on a short stout peduncle, and about a third of an inch in diameter, with 
rather thick sweet dry flesh. The seed is a quarter of an inch broad, with a light bright chestnut- 
colored coat and a small micropyle. 
Sabal Palmetto inhabits sandy soil in the immediate neighborhood of the coast, and is distributed 
from Smith’s Island at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, North Carolina, to Key Largo, Florida, and 
along the Gulf coast to the mouth of the Appalachicola River. Often forming groves of considerable 
extent on the Atlantic coast, it is most abundant and grows to its largest size on the west coast of the 
Florida peninsula south of Cedar Keys.’ 
The wood of Sabal Palmetto is light, soft, and pale brown in color, and contains numerous hard 
fibro-vascular bundles which make it difficult to work, the outer rim of the stem, about two inches in 
thickness, being much lighter and softer. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4404, a 
cubic foot weighing 27.45 pounds. In the southern states the trunks are used for wharf-piles ; 
polished cross sections of the stem sometimes serve for the tops of small tables, and the wood is largely 
manufactured into canes. From the sheaths of young leaves the bristles of scrubbing-brushes are made 
in Florida in considerable quantities.’ 
1 Wilson, Forest Leaves, iii. 53, f. bing-brushes now often used in the United States, three or four 
2 To obtain the fibre used in the manufacture of the coarse scrub- feet of the top of the tree, “the bud,” as it is technically called, 
