50 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. PALMA. 
Thrinax is confined to the New World, where it is distributed from the Bahama Islands and 
southern Florida through the West Indies to the Isthmus of Panama. Twelve species are described, 
although with regard to several of them little is yet known. Four and probably five species! inhabit 
southern Florida, one of them being a low shrub.’ 
The large coriaceous tough fan-shaped leaves of many of the species are used to thatch the roofs 
of buildings ; and several of the species are cultivated as ornamental plants in the tropics and in the 
glass-houses of northern gardens.’ 
The generic name, from Opiva£, alludes to the form of the leaves. 
1 In addition to the species of Thrinax described in this volume, lected by Dr. A. P. Garber at Cape Sabal in October, 1879, and 
there is another arborescent Euthrinax on the Marquesas Keys and preserved in the Gray Herbarium, indicate the presence of another 
probably on some of the keys east of Key West. It isa low tree, Porothrinax in Florida. 
with a thick trunk raised above the surface of the ground by a 2 Thrinax Garberi, Chapman, Bot. Gazette, iii. 12 (1878) ; Fil. ed. 
cluster of stout roots, large leaves, and fruit remarkable for the 2, Suppl. 651. 
thickness of the fleshy pericarp. 3 H. Wendland, Index Palmarum, 39. 
Portions of a leaf and a few fruits of a Thrinax-like Palm col- 
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES. 
EUTHRINAX. 
Pedicels stout, elongated; filaments filamentose ; fruit dark brown, with thin dry flesh ; seed 
light tawny brown, conspicuously sulcate; albumen ruminate . . . . . - - . + + + 4d. T. PARVIFLORA. 
PoROTHRINAX. 
Pedicels short, disk-like; filaments triangular; fruit orange-brown, the pericarp crustaceous ; 
seed dark chestnut-brown and lustrous; albumen uniform . . . . . . +--+ + © « & T. MICROCARPA. 
