PALM.E 



109 



7. PSEUDOPHGEN1X H. Wendl. 



A tree, with a slender stem abruptly enlarged at the base or tapering from the middle to 

 the ends, covered with thin pale blue or nearly white rind, and conspicuously marked by 

 the dark scars of fallen leaf-stalks. Leaves erect, abruptly pinnate, with crowded linear- 

 lanceolate acuminate leaflets increasing in length and width from the ends to the middle of 

 the leaf, thick and firm in texture, dark yellow-green above, pale and glaucous below; 

 rachis convex on the lower side, concave on the upper side near the base of the leaf, with 

 thin margins, becoming toward the apex of the leaf flat and narrowed below and acute above, 

 marked on the sides at the base with dark gland-like excrescences; petioles short, concave 

 above, with thin entire margins separating into slender fibres, gradually enlarged into broad 

 thick sheaths of short brittle fibres. Spadix interfoliar, compound, pendulous, stalked, 

 much shorter than the leaves, with spreading primary branches, stout and much flattened 

 toward the base, slender and rounded above the middle, furnished at the base with a 

 thickened ear-like body, slender secondary branches, short thin rigid densely flowered 

 ultimate divisions, and compressed light green double spathes erose on their thin dark 

 brown margins. Flowers on slender pedicels articulate by an expanded base, widely 

 scattered on the ultimate branches of the spadix, staminate and bisexual in the same in- 

 florescence; calyx reduced to the saucer-like rim of the thickened receptacle, undulate on 

 the margin, the rounded angles alternating with the petals; petals 3, valvate in the bud, ob- 

 long, rounded at apex, thick conspicuously longitudinally veined, persistent; stamens 

 6, with short flattened nearly triangular filaments slightly united at the base into a narrow 

 fleshy disk, and triangular cordate anthers attached at the base in a cavity on their outer 

 face, 2-celled, the cells opening by lateral slits; styles of the perfect flower 3-lobed at the 

 apex with obtuse appressed lobes, that of the sterile flower as long or longer than that of the 

 perfect flower, more slender and tapering into a narrow 3-pointed apex. Fruit a stalked 

 globose 2 or 3-lobed orange-scarlet thin-fleshed drupe marked by the lateral style and sur- 

 rounded' below by the withered remnants of the flower; pedicel abruptly enlarged at 

 base, articulate from a persistent cushion-like body furnished in the centre with a minute 

 point penetrating a cavity in the base of the pedicel. Seed subglobose, free, erect, with 

 a basal hilum and a thin light red-brown coat marked by the pale conspicuous ascend- 

 ing 2 or 3-branched raphe; embryo minute, basal, in uniform horny albumen. 



Pseudophcenix with a single species inhabits the keys of southern Florida, and the 

 Bahamas. 



The generic name is in allusion to a fancied resemblance to Phoenix, a genus of Palms. 



1. Pseudophrenix vinifera Becc. 

 Leaves 5-6 long, with pinnae often 18' long and 1' wide near the middle of the leaf, 



Fig. 105 



