The fruit is eaten by Indians. 
The genus is dedicated to George Washington. 
Paz, Lower California, Washingtonia Sonore, which is still very 
imperfectly known, is described as a tree twenty-five feet in 
height, with a trunk a foot in diameter, and glaucous filiferous 
leaves three or four feet in diameter, borne on comparatively slen- 
der petioles beset on the margins with variously curved spines, 
connected by a web of floccose hairs. The spadix is shorter, more 
slender, and more sparingly branched, and the perianth is thinner 
and more scarious than those of Washingtonia jfilamentosa. The 
seeds, which are flattened-globose, and about an eighth of an inch 
long, are used by the Indians of Lower California as food. 
Another species, Washingtonia robusta, has been described (H. 
Wendland, Berlin. Gartenzeit. ii. 198 (1883).— André, Rev. Hort. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
PALMAE. 
1885, 401, f. 73; 1895, 155. — Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. xxv. 136. — 
8. B. Parish, Garden and Forest, iii. 52, 542 ; Zoé, iv. 350. — Orcutt, 
W. Am. Scientist, i. 63, 76). Washingtonia robusta appeared about 
1869, in Linden’s nursery in Ghent, among a number of plants of 
Washingtonia filamentosa which were raised from seed believed to 
have been obtained from Lower California, and may be a seminal 
form of this species, as is now usually believed, or more probably 
a species from Lower California still unknown in a wild state. In 
gardens, where it has not flowered, Washingtonia robusta is a more 
vigorous and more rapid-growing plant than Washingtonia filamen- 
tosa, and its darker green and more lustrous leaves on shorter 
petioles give it a more robust appearance. 
