PALME. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 51 
THRINAX PARVIFLORA. 
Silk-Top Palmetto. 
PEDICELS stout, elongated ; filaments filamentose. Fruit dark brown, with thin 
dry flesh; seed light tawny brown, conspicuously sulcate. 
Thrinax parviflora, Swartz, Prodr. 57 (1788); Fl. Ind. Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1091. — Walpers, Ann. v. 818. — Grise- 
Oce. i. 614, t. 13. — Aiton, Hort. Kew. iii. 473. — Willde- bach, Fl. Brit. W. Ind. 515. — Vasey, Rep. U. S. Dept. 
now, Spec. ii. pt. i. 202. — Persoon, Syn. i. 383. — Lunan, Agric. 1875, 186 (Cat. Forest Trees U. S.). — Chapman, 
Hort. Jam. ii. 28.— Poiret, Lam. Dict. vii. 635. — Tit- Bot. Gazette, iii. 12; Fl. ed. 2, Suppl. 651. — Eggers, 
ford, Hort. Bot. Am. 112.— Sprengel, Syst. ii. 20. — Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 13, 118 (£2. St. Croix and the 
Roemer & Schultes, Syst. vii. pt. ii. 1800. — Martius, Hist. Virgin Islands). — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th 
Nat. Palm. iii. 255, t. 103. — Kunth, Enum. iii. 253. — Census U. S. ix. 217. 
A tree, in Florida from twenty to thirty feet in height, with a slender stem four or five inches in 
diameter, covered with thin smooth blue-gray rind. The leaves are orbicular, from three to four feet 
in diameter, thin, bright green on the upper surface, paler and coated while young on the lower 
surface with pale caducous tomentum, and, except at the base, where they are split nearly to the ligula, 
divided for about two thirds of their diameter into laciniate lobes, with stout yellow midribs prominent 
on the upper side, and with much thickened reflexed margins; the lobes near the middle of the leaf 
are from an inch to an inch and a quarter broad, diminishing in width toward the base of the leaf, 
where they are not more than a quarter of an inch wide; the rachis of the leaf is reduced to a thin 
truncate undulate border, and the ligula is crescent-shaped, about an eighth of an inch long, a quarter 
of an inch thick, and an inch wide, and is furnished near the middle with a flat nearly triangular point 
half an inch long; the petiole is thin and flexible, three quarters of an inch wide at the base of the 
blade, rounded and ridged on the upper and lower sides, about as long as the blade of the leaf, and 
enlarged below into the elongated sheath, which is coated while young with a thick felt-like hoary 
tomentum. Three or four panicles of flowers, from two to three feet in length, usually appear each 
year, the flowers opening in Florida in the autumn; their secondary branches are much flattened, 
recurved, and from four to six inches in length, the slender flower-bearing branchlets being from an 
inch and a half to five inches long, and in the axils of ovate acute scarious brownish bracts about three 
quarters of an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide; the spathes are coriaceous, pubescent above 
the middle, and often ciliate on the margins at the apex. The flowers, which are raised on rigid 
spreading pedicels an eighth of an inch in length, consist of a cup-lke six-lobed perianth, six or nine 
stamens, with slender exserted filaments slightly united below and large oblong light yellow anthers, 
and a subglobose dark orange-colored ovary surmounted by an elongated style dilated into a broad 
oblique stigma. The fruit, which ripens in April, is dark chestnut-brown or nearly black, and rather 
less than a quarter of an inch in diameter, with a thin somewhat fleshy outer coat closely investing the 
rather thicker crustaceous light brown inner coat, and a deeply furrowed depressed-globose tawny 
brown seed an eighth of an inch in diameter, with ruminate albumen. 
In Florida Thrinaz parviflora has been found only on the southern keys from Bahia Honda to 
Long’s Key, usually growing in low moist sandy soil or in sandy swamps. It also inhabits the Bahama 
Islands and many of the Antilles. 
The wood of Zhrinax parviflora is light, soft, and pale brown, with a hard outer rim about an 
eighth of an inch in thickness, and contains numerous hard inconspicuous fibro-vascular bundles. The 
specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.5991, a cubic foot weighing 37.34 pounds. 
