PALMA. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 49 
THRINAX. 
FLowERs perfect; calyx and corolla confluent into a short cup, 6-toothed on the 
margin; stamens 6 to 12; ovary usually 1-celled; ovule basilar, erect. Fruit 
drupaceous ; pericarp dry or fleshy. Spadix interfoliar, paniculate. Leaves orbicular, 
or truncate at the base, petiolate, the petioles unarmed. 
Thrinax, Swartz, Prodr. 57 (1788). — Endlicher, Gen. 
253. — Meisner, Gen. 357. — Bentham & Hooker, Gen. 
iii. 930.— Drude, Engler & Prantl Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. 
iii. 34. — Baillon, Hist. Pl. xiii. 317. 
Hemithrinax, Hooker f. Bentham & Hooker Gen. iii. 930 
(1883). 
Small unarmed trees or shrubs, with simple or clustered endogenous stems marked below by the 
ring-like scars of fallen leaves, and clothed above with the long-persistent petiole-sheaths. Leaves 
terminal, induplicate in vernation, alternate, flabellate, orbicular, or truncate at the base, more or less 
deeply divided into narrow acute two-parted plicately folded lobes; rachises short or wanting; ligulas 
free, erect, concave, often apiculate; petioles compressed, slightly rounded and ridged on both sides, 
their margins thin and smooth, gradually enlarged below into elongated vaginas of coarse fibres often 
forming an open conspicuous network and generally clothed while young with thick felt-like hoary 
tomentum. Spadix interfoliar, paniculate, elongated, pedunculate, its primary branches alternate, 
furnished with numerous short slender graceful flower-bearing secondary branchlets produced in the 
axils of scarious acute bracts; spathes numerous, tubular, coriaceous or papyraceous, splitting at 
the apex, inserted on the rachis of the panicle, each primary branch with its spathe and the node of the 
rachis below it inclosed in a separate spathe, the whole surrounded by the larger spathe of the node 
next below. Flowers solitary or rarely in two or three-flowered clusters, minute, articulate on slender 
elongated or short broad pedicels in the axils of caducous bracts, usually bibracteolate, the bractlets 
minute and caducous. Sepals and petals confluent into a cup-shaped or ring-hke perianth, truncate at 
the base, six-toothed on the margin. Stamens six, nine, or twelve, inserted on the base of the perianth; 
filaments subulate, filiform or triangular, slightly united at the base, exserted, or wanting; anthers 
oblong or linear-oblong, attached on the back, introrse or extrorse, two-celled, the cells free below, 
opening longitudinally. Ovary superior, ovoid, or globose, one or rarely two or three-celled, narrowed 
above into a slender columnar style crowned by a funnel-formed often oblique stigma; ovule solitary in 
Fruit subglobose, black, 
or light orange-colored, crowned with the remnants of the style, raised on a thickened stalk, 
each cell, basilar, erect, semianatropous, the micropyle inferior or sublateral. 
surrounded at the base by the persistent perianth of the flower; exocarp thick or thin, fleshy or 
crustaceous, closely investing the thin membranaceous endocarp. Seed free, globose or depressed- 
globose ; testa thin, hght tawny brown and vertically sulcate, or dark chestnut-brown and lustrous ; 
albumen horny, ruminate, or uniform and deeply penetrated by a broad basal cavity; hilum minute, 
or oblong and conspicuous, basilar or subbasilar ; raphe branched, inconspicuous.’ 
1 By Drude (Engler & Prantl, Pflanzenfam. ii. pt. ili. 34) the 
following sections are proposed : — 
EvutTHrinax. Flowers solitary, long-pedicellate ; perianth lobes 
minute ; filaments elongated ; anthers introrse ; pericarp thin and 
subsucculent, or thick and succulent ; seed vertically sulcate by 
the infolding of the light tawny brown testa into the ruminate 
albumen. 
HEMITHRINAX. 
clusters, sessile or short-pedicellate ; perianth lobes setulose ; an- 
Flowers solitary or rarely in 2 or 3-flowered 
thers sessile, extrorse ; pericarp crustaceous ; seed depressed at the 
base, dark chestnut-brown and lustrous ; albumen uniform, pene- 
trated by a broad deep basal cavity. 
PoroTHRINAX. Flowers solitary, short-pedicellate ; perianth 
lobes broadly ovate, acute ; filaments triangular ; anthers introrse, 
becoming reflexed and extrorse at maturity ; pericarp crustaceons ; 
seed depressed at the base, dark chestnut-brown and lustrous ; 
albumen uniform, penetrated by a braad deep basal cavity. 
