GENUS, WASHINGTONIA. 61 



ENDOGENOUS OR MONOCOTYLEDONOUS PLANTS. 



Flowering plants, in the stems of which the woody fibers and vessels are irregu- 

 larly imbedded in bundles in cellular tissue (not in annual layers). The leaves 

 are mostly parallel-veined, sheathing at the base, alternate "or scattered, not 

 toothed and rarely separating by an articulation. First leaf of the embryo ^coty- 

 ledon) single and the parts of the flower generally in threes. 



PAIMM : PALM FAMILY. 



Leaves flabellate or pinnately divided, rarely simple, springing from the ter 

 minal bud, alternate and with base sheathing the stem. Flowers usually diclinous, 

 on a branched spadix ; perianth of six herbaceous segments in two rows ; stamens 

 six (rarely fewer or more) hypogynous or perigynous ; pistil with superior 8- 

 (rarely 1-) celled ovary of three separate carpels with a single or rarely 2 ovules 

 ia each cell ; styles short, free or connate. Fruit commonly a berry or drupe, 

 with large seeds having a minute peripheric embryo in fleshy or horny albumen. 



The order consists of upwards of 1,000 species of perennials trees and shrubs 

 of tropical and subtropical regions, of elegant or majestic habit of growth and 

 many of them of great economic importance. Their stems present the typical 

 endogenous structure, the wood forming in dense wire-like bundles, known as 

 fibro- vascular bundles, between which is a mass of thin walled pith like cells 

 known as parenchyma. The woody bundles are crowded more closely together 

 toward the periphery of the stems, which is generally there quite hard in con- 

 sequence and the central portion is comparatively soft. There is no true bark on 

 these stems nor is there a central pith column as with exogenous stems. 



GENUS WASHINGTONIA, WENDLAND. 



Leaves flabellate, orbicular, plicate in vernation, deeply divided into many 

 2-deft segments, from the margins of which hang numerous pale thread-like 

 fibres, and at the union of the petiole with the blade above is a thin elongated 

 laciniate ligula; petioles long, broad, with margins armed with strong, variously 

 hooked and straight wide-based but thin spines, the base of petiole widening out 

 an:l margined with a broad fabric-like chestnut-brown network of strong fibres. 

 Flowers perfect, small, white, from the axils of ovate acute scarious bracts, on 

 elongated paniculate glabrous spadices, which appears from among the leaves 

 with numerous flexuose pendulous branches; spathes numerous, narrow, elon- 

 gated, glabrous; calyx tubular, scarious, with three small eroded lobes, indurate 

 at base, persistent, imbricated in aestivation; corolla funnel-shaped with fleshy 

 tube half as long as the three lanceolate acute striate reflexed lobes, imbricated 

 in aestivation, deciduous; stamens usually six, sometime three or many, 

 exserted, with free filaments thickened below the middle, slender at apex and 

 bearing linear-oblong 2-celled versatile pale yellow anthers, attached on the back 

 and longitudinally dehiscent; ovary superior, sessile, 3-lobed, 3-celled, with 

 elongated flexuose exserted style, stiguiatic at apex and containing a single 

 lateral erect anatropous ovule in each cell. Fruit drupaceous, small, blackish, 

 globose-elliptical, short stalked and crowned with the remnants of the style and 

 abortive carpels, the fleshy pericarp thin and sweet, and the seed oblong- ovoid, 

 with minute sublateral hiluin, conspicuous raphe, thin brown testa, horny albu- 

 men and minute lateral embryo. 



Genus composed of two species; one, found in California, and the adjacent 

 regions of Lower California, is described below, and the other, Wasliingtonia 

 Sonorae, is found in the mountain canons of western Sonora and southern 

 Lower California and as yet is quite imperfectly known. 



