PALM.E 105 



4-6 long and about 2' broad at apex, with sheaths 16'-18' long and 12'-14' wide, and 

 ligules 4' long and cut irregularly into long narrow lobes. Flowers: spadix 10-12 long, 

 3 or 4 being produced each year from the axils of upper leaves, the outer spathe inclosing 

 the bud, narrow, elongated, and glabrous, those of the secondary branches coriaceous, yel- 

 low tinged with brown, and laciniate at apex; flowers slightly fragrant, opening late in 

 May or early in June. Fruit produced in great profusion, ripening in September, J' long; 

 seed 1' long, f ' thick. 



A tree, occasionally 75 high, with a trunk sometimes 50-60 tall and 2-3 in diameter, 

 covered with a thick light red-brown scaly rind and clothed with a thick thatch of dead 

 pendant leaves descending in a regular cone from the broad crown of living leaves some- 

 times nearly to the ground. Wood light and soft, with numerous conspicuous dark orange- 

 colored fibro- vascular bundles. The fruit is gathered and used as food by the Indians. 



Distribution. Often forming extensive groves or small isolated clumps in wet usually 

 alkali soil in depressions along the northern and northwestern margins of the Colorado 

 Desert in southern California, sometimes extending for several miles up the canons of the 

 San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains; and in Lower California. 



Now largely cultivated in southern California, New Orleans, southern Europe, and 

 other temperate regions. 



5. ACCELORRAPHE H. Wendl. 



Trees, with tall slender often clustered stems clothed for many years with the sheathing 

 bases of the petioles of fallen leaves. Leaves suborbicular, divided into numerous two- 

 parted segments plicately folded at the base; rachis short, acute; ligule thin, concave, fur- 

 nished with a broad membranaceous dark red-brown deciduous border; petioles slender, 

 flat or slightly concave on the upper side, rounded and ridged on the lower side, with a broad 

 high rounded ridge, thickened and cartilaginous on the margins, more or less furnished with 

 stout or slender flattened teeth; vagina thin and firm, bright mahogany red, lustrous, 

 closely infolding the stem, its fibres thin and tough. Spadix paniculate, interpetiolar, its 

 rachis slender, compressed, ultimate branches, numerous, slender, elongated, gracefully 

 drooping, hoary-tomentose, the primary branches flattened, the secondary terete in the 

 axils of ovate acute chestnut-brown bracts; spathes flattened, thick and firm, deeply two- 

 cleft and furnished at apex with a red-brown membranaceous border, inclosing the 

 rachis of the panicle, each primary branch with its spathe and the node of the rachis below 

 it inclosed in a separate spathe, the whole surrounded by the larger spathe of the node 

 next below. Flowers perfect, minute, sessile on the ultimate branches of the spadix, 

 in the axils of ovate acute chestnut-brown caducous bracts, solitary toward the end of the 

 branches and in two- or three-flowered clusters near their base; calyx truncate at base, 

 divided into three broadly ovate sepals dentate on the margins, valvate in aestivation, en- 

 larged and persistent under the fruit; corolla three-parted nearly to the base, its divisions 

 valvate in aestivation, oblong-ovate, thick, concave and thickened at apex, deciduous; 

 stamens six, included; filaments nearly triangular, united below into a cup adnate to the 

 short tube of the corolla; anthers short-oblong, attached on the back below the middle, 

 introrse, two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary obovoid, of three carpels, 

 each with two deep depressions on their outer face, united into a slender style; stigma 

 minute, terminal, persistent on the fruit; ovule solitary, erect from the bottom of the cell, 

 anatropous. Fruit drupaceous, subglobose, one-seeded, black and lustrous; exocarp thin 

 and fleshy; endocarp thin, crustaceous; seed erect, free, subglobose, light chestnut-brown; 

 testa thin and hard; hilum small, suborbicular; raphe ventral, oblong, elongated, black, 

 slightly prominent, without ramifications; embryo lateral; albumen homogeneous. 



Two species of Accelorraphe have been distinguished; they inhabit southern Florida, 

 and one species occurs also in Cuba and on the Bahama Islands. 



The generic name, from d priv., KOI \o s and pa<fyf), refers to the character of the seed. 



