Erythea. PALM.E. 211 



1. WASHINGTONIA, WENDLAND. 



Flowers unknown except from the remains of the perianth found at the base of 

 the fruit, which show it to be gamophyllous, with a cylindrical tube as long as 

 the imbricate broad-rounded lobes ; pedicel short. Fruit a small shortly stipitate 

 oblong-ovate black drupe, with thin pulp and crustaceous endocarp, 1 -celled, and bear- 

 ing the scale-like abortive carpels on the summit at the base of the tiliforni persistent 

 style. Seed oblong-ovate, somewhat flattened on the ventral side, brownish with 

 thin testa ; albumen entire, horny and oily ; embryo basal. A tree, with circular 

 flabelliform leaves ; petioles armed with stout hooked marginal spines ; ligule large 

 and appressed, coriaceous, glabrous; rhachis short; blade deeply cleft along the 

 upper folds and copiously filiferous : paniculately branching spadix glabrous, slender 

 and elongated, from a narrow glabrous spathe. A California!! genus. 



1. W. filifera, Wendl. Becoming 20 to 40 feet high, with a cylindrical trunk 

 more or less enlarged at base (often 2 or 3 feet in diameter), and covered with the 

 persistent bases and sheaths of dead leaves : petioles very stout, glabrous, plano- 

 convex or slightly concave on the upper side, comparatively thin toward the margin, 

 2 to 5 feet long and 1 to 2^ inches broad at the summit in well developed leaves; 

 ligule usually large and conspicuous, lacerate ; blade tomentose on the margin of 

 the (40 to 60) folds, 3 to 5 feet in diameter, cleft on the upper side nearly to the 

 middle, the divisions terminated and margined with very numerous fine elongated 

 fibres (often 6 to 12 inches long) : flowering stems 8 to 10 feet long : fruit nearly 4 

 lines long, black, with thin sweet pulp : seed 3 lines long. Bot. Zeit. xxxvii. 68. 

 Braliea dulcis (]), Cooper, Smithson. Rep. 1860, 442. Brahea Jilamentosa, Hort. 

 Pritchardia filamentosa, Wendl. ; Drude, Bot. Zeit. xxxiv. 807 ; Fenzi, Bull. Soc. 

 Tosc. Ort. i. 116, fig. 



From Southern California (San Bernardino County) to Western Arizona, in rocky localities in 

 dry sheltered canons, solitary or few in a group. It is now cultivated for ornament in towns near 

 the coast as far north as San Francisco, and has been extensively distributed among the gardens 

 of Europe. The same or a very similar species (from which the above description of the flowers 

 is drawn) was found by Dr. E. Palmer in the Tantillas Mountains of Lower California, near the 

 boundary line. 



2. ERYTHEA, WATSON. 



Flowers perfect, sessile, in a loose decompound panicle ; calyx campanulate, some- 

 what scarious, 3-parted, shorter than the thick valvate 3-cleft corolla. Stamens 6 ; 

 filaments thick, connate and adnate to the corolla, free and deltoid above and seta- 

 ceously tipped ; anthers small, round-oblong, obtuse. Ovary of 3 nearly distinct 

 oblong carpels, with very short Tinited styles ; two of the carpels usually abortive. 

 Fruit a globose black drupe, the thick fleshy endocarp somewhat adherent to the 

 subglobose seed. Hiluin at one side of the base. Albumen excavated to the mid- 

 dle on the ventral side and filled by the brown thickened testa. Embryo near the 

 base. Tall trees, with naked trunks, flabelliform plicate filiferous leaves and 

 densely tomentose sheaths and inflorescence. Spathes sheathing. Flowers solitary 

 or in clusters, scattered along the numerous branches of the pendent panicle. 

 Petioles pubescent or glabrate, unarmed or with stout hooks on the margin ; ligule 

 appressed, densely tomentose ; rhachis of the leaf short, and the blade deeply cleft 

 down both the upper and lower folds and more or less fibrous on the margins. 



Only the following species are known. The genus is very nearly allied to Livistonn, of Aus- 

 tralia and eastern Asia, which differs in its distinct filaments, oblong fruit with hard crustaceous 



