62 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



200. WASHINGTONIA FILAMENTOSA, 0. K. 



CALIFORNIA FAN PALM, DESERT PALM. 



Ger., Cali/ornische Wedelpalme ; Fr., Palmier d'eventail ; Sp., 



Palma de abaniro. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: Leaves light green, 5 to 6 ft. in length and nearly as 

 broad, with stout elongated petioles 4-6 feet long and about 2 in. broad at the 

 upper end, 5 or 6 in. at base, where they split and widen into the sheathing base, 

 and strongly armed along the margins with variously curved and straight thin 

 broad-based spines; ligulas 4-6 in. long irregularly laoiniate. Flowers (May to 

 June) slightly fragrant in glabrous light-green paniculate spadices, 10 to 12 feet 

 long, from the axils of upper leaves, at first erect and spreading, but finally 

 pendulous. Fruit (ripe in September) very abundant black drupes, about | in. 

 long with thin sweet pulp; seed i in. long. 



The specific name, ftlamentosa, is from the Latin filum, thread, referring to the 

 thread-like fibres hanging from the edges of the leaves. 



This beautiful Palm, the largest of the family growing within the 

 United States, sometimes attains the height of 75 ft. (22 m.), with a 

 trunk 3 ft. (1 m.) or somewhat more in diameter at base. It is 

 crowned with a tuft of great fan-shaped light green leaves, which, 

 springing vertically from the growing summit, gradually bend out- 

 ward, and when finally brown and lifeless lop down about the trunk 

 where a great mass of them accumulates and persists for some years 

 until they gradually drop away and leave the naked brown columnar 

 trunk rough with the projecting wire-like bundles of wood. This is 

 the appearance of the tree unkempt, in its desert home, but with 

 ornamental trees the old leaves are usually trimmed off as soon as they 

 become unsightly and droop. The trunk is then left, either wickered 

 over, as it were, witli the forked bases of the old leaves or those too 

 are trimmed away and an annulated rind -like covering remains. 



HABITAT. Along the borders of the depression in the Colorado 

 Desert, which was once filled by an inland sea, extending up some of 

 the canons of the neighboring San Jacinto and San Bernardino 

 Mountains and ranging southward into Lower California, growing in 

 moist and usually alkaline soil near the beds of canons and water 

 courses where it forms in places small open groves. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. The wood of this Palm is light and soft, 

 with rather large fibro- vascular bundles of a garnet color in old 

 trunks, and sparsely distributed through the mass of pinkish colored 

 pith-like intervening tissue (parenchyma), each bundle with two or 

 three large ducts near the periphery. The color above alluded to is 

 what I have seen in old wood taken from near the base of the trunks 



