Saw Cabbage Palm 141 



spine-like teeth placed close together, and it expands below into a fibrous sheath. 

 The panicles are axillary, shorter than the leaves, its numerous branches angled 

 and velvety; the white stalkless flowers are very numerous and fragrant; the calyx 

 is 3-Iobcd, cup-like, and about i mm. long; the oblong petals are concave, 

 2-keeIed on the inner side, and slightly united at the base, 3 or 4 mm. long; the 6 

 stamens are rather shorter than the petals, their tilaments slender; the ovary is 

 composed of 3 carpels, separate at the base but united above. The fruit is an 

 oblong smooth black drupe, 15 to 18 mm. long, containing a smooth oblong, 

 shining seed enclosed in a fibrous layer. 



The wood is rather hard for a palm, red-brown, and rich in tannin, which is 

 extracted in the form of a thick licjuid and shipped to northern tanneries; a coarse 

 fiber is also extracted from the trunk. The fruit is valued as a fattening food for 

 domestic animals and a ffuid extract made from it is used for medicinal purposes; 

 the leafy tops are cut off and shipped north during winter for decoration. 



VI. SAW CABBAGE PALM 



GENUS PAUROTIS O. F. COOK 



Species Paurotis Wrightii (Grisebach and Wendland) Britten 



Copcrnicid Wrightii Grisebach and Wendland, 1866 



Serenoa arborescens Sargent, 1899. Paurotis androsana O. F. Cook, 1902 



AUROTIS is a monotypic genus, inhabiting swamps and hammocks 

 along the Chokoloskee River southwestern Florida, Andros island, 

 Bahamas, where it is called Spanish-top, and is frequent in Cuba. 

 This palm has a slender, erect, or inclined trunk up to 15 meters 

 high and 1.5 dm. thick, and often grows in clumps. The light green leaves 

 are very deeply palmately cleft into numerous Hnear segments, which are i to 

 2 cm. wide, each segment again cleft one third its length, or less; the dark brown 

 leaf-stalks are about as long as the blades, concave on the upper side, their margins 

 armed with stout cuived spine-Hke teeth; the leaf-sheaths are fibrous and per- 

 sistent, clothing the trunk for some distance below the living foliage. The small, 

 perfect flowers are stalkless and very numerous in flat-stalked, elongated panicles 

 borne among the leaves, and these are subtended by several hnear brown-edged 

 spathes; the branchlets of the panicle are usually hairy; the calyx is minute and 

 3-lobed, the corolla deeply 3-parted, yellowish green, its segments oblong-ovate, 

 acute, about i mm. long; the 6 stamens have nearly triangular filaments and are 

 a trifle shorter than the corolla. The fruits are black globose drupes about 8 mm. 

 in diameter, the subglobose brown seed somewhat flattened at the base. 



The generic name is Greek. The leaves are bright white beneath when 

 young, and are used for making hats on Andros island. 



