PALM^E 



107 



3-4 long, with a slender much-flattened stalk, panicled lower branches 18'-20' in length, 

 and 6-8 thick firm pale green conspicuously ribbed spathes dilated^ at apex into a 

 narrow border; flowers with a light chestnut-brown calyx and a pale yellow-green corolla. 

 Fruit globose, f ' in diameter; seed somewhat flattened below, with a pale vertical mark 

 on the lower side, and a hilum joined to the micropyle by a pale band. 



A tree, from 30-40 high, with 1 or several clustered erect inclining or occasionally semi- 

 prostrate stems 3'-4' in diameter, covered almost to the ground by the closely clasping 

 bases of the leaf-stalks and below with a thick pale rind. 



Fig. 103 



Distribution. Low undrained soil covered for many months of every year in water 

 from l'-18' deep, occasionally occupying almost exclusively areas of several acres in ex- 

 tent or more often scattered among Cypress-trees or Royal Palms, in the swamps and 

 along the hummocks adjacent to the Chokoloskee River and its tributaries and at the head 

 of East River, Whitewater Bay, in southwestern Florida. 



6. ROYSTONEA Cook. Royal Palm. 



Unarmed trees, with massive stems enlarged near the middle, and terminating in long 

 slender bright green cylinders formed by the densely imbricated sheaths of the leaf-stalks. 

 Leaves equally pinnate, with linear-lanceolate long-pointed unequally cleft plicately-folded 

 pinnae inserted obliquely on the upper side of the rachis, folded together at the base, with 

 thin midribs and margins; rachis convex on the back, broad toward the base of the leaf 

 and acute toward its apex; petioles semicylindric, gradually enlarged into thick elon- 

 gated green sheaths. Spadix large, decompound, produced near the base of the green 

 part of the stem, with long pendulous branches ad 2 spathes, the outer semicylindric and 

 as long as the spadix, the inner splitting ventrally and inclosing the branches of the spadix. 

 Flowers monoecious, in a loose spiral, toward the base of the branch in 3-flowered clusters, 

 with a central staminate and smaller lateral pistillate flowers, higher on the branch the 

 stamina te in 2-flowered clusters; calyx of the staminate flower of minute broadly ovate 

 obtuse scarious sepals imbricated in the bud, much shorter than the corolla; petals nearly 

 equal, valvate in the bud, ovate or obovate, acute, slightly united at the base, coriaceous; 

 stamens. 6, 9, or 12, with subulate filaments united below and adnate to the base of the 

 corolla, and large ovate-sagittate anthers, the cells free below; ovary rudimentary, sub- 

 globose or 3-lobed; pistillate flowers much smaller, ovoid-conic; sepals obtuse; corolla 

 erect, divided to the middle into acute erect lobes incurved at apex; staminodia 6, 

 scale-like, united into a cup adnate to the corolla; ovary subglobose, obscurely 2 or 3-lobed, 



