PALM. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 45 
WASHINGTONIA. 
FLowers perfect; calyx tubular, slightly 3-lobed; corolla funnel-formed, 3-lobed; 
stamens 6; ovary superior, 3-celled; ovule solitary, erect. Fruit baccate, ellipsoidal, 
l-celled. Spadix elongated, compound, interfoliar. Leaves alternate, flabellate, 
orbicular, long-petioled ; petioles spinose on the margins. 
Washingtonia, H. Wendland, Bot. Zeit. xxxvii. 68 i. 35 (in part) (1889). — Baillon, Hist. Pl. xiii. 319 (in 
(1879). — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 923. part). 
Pritchardia, Drude, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. 
Trees, with stout columnar endogenous trunks covered below with thick pale rind and above with 
the persistent sheaths of many dead leaves, long tough roots, and a broad terminal crown of erect, then. 
spreading, and ultimately pendulous leaves. Leaves induplicate in vernation, alternate, flabellate, 
orbicular, divided nearly to the middle into many narrow deeply two-cleft recurved segments, separating 
on the margins into numerous slender pale fibres, long-petiolate; those of the first year lnear- 
lanceolate ; rachises short, slightly rounded on the back, gradually contracted from a broad base, their 
margins concave, and furnished below with narrow erect wings, slender and acute above; ligulas oblong, 
elongated, thin, broad and conspicuously laciniate at the apex; petioles broad and thin, plano-convex 
or slightly concave on the upper side, rounded on the lower, armed irregularly with broad thin large 
and small, straight or hooked spines confluent into a thin bright orange-colored cartilaginous margin, 
gradually enlarged at the base into the thick elongated broad concave light bright chestnut-brown 
vaginas composed of a network of thin strong fibres. Spadix interfoliar, paniculate, elongated, 
pedunculate, glabrous, its numerous branches flexuose and pendulous; spathes numerous, narrow, 
elongated, glabrous. Flowers minute, white, articulate on thickened disk-like pedicels in the axils of 
ovate acute scarious bracts, slender and acuminate before anthesis. Calyx tubular, indurate at the base, 
gradually enlarged and slightly three-lobed at the apex, scarious, persistent under the fruit, the lobes 
retuse, scarious, erose, imbricated in estivation. Corolla funnel-formed, the fleshy tube included in the 
calyx, half as long as the lanceolate acute striate lobes thickened and glandular on the inner surface at 
the base, reflexed, imbricated in estivation, deciduous. Stamens six, inserted on the throat of the 
corolla; filaments free and flattened below, much thickened near the middle, slender and terete toward 
the apex, exserted; anthers linear-oblong, attached on the back, versatile, pale yellow, two-celled, the 
cells spreading below, opening longitudinally. Ovary superior, sessile on a thin disk, depressed-obovoid, 
three-lobed, three-celled, crowned by an elongated flexuose exserted white horny style stigmatic at the 
apex; ovule solitary in each cell, lateral, erect, anatropous. Fruit baccate, small, ellipsoidal, one-celled, 
one-seeded, short-stalked, crowned with the remnants of the abortive carpels and of the style; pericarp 
of two coats, the outer thin, dry, black, and fleshy, the inner membranaceous dark orange-colored, 
lustrous on the inner surface. Seed free, erect, oblong-ovate, convex above, the base flat, depressed in 
the centre, marked by the minute sublateral hilum and the broad conspicuous raphe ; micropyle lateral, 
minute; testa thin, light chestnut-brown, closely investing the uniform horny albumen. Embryo 
minute, lateral, the radicle turned toward the base of the fruit. 
Two species of Washingtonia are known; one inhabits the interior desert region of southern 
California and the adjacent part of Lower California, and the second’ the mountain caiions of western 
Sonora and southern Lower California. 
1 Washingtonia Sonore, Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xxiv. 79 First collected by Dr. Edward Palmer in 1887 in secluded 
(1889) ; xxv. 136. ceafions of the mountains about Guaymas and subsequently at La 
