107 



I' wide, ' deep, their petioles slender, pale, yellow-green, 2^-3 long. Flowers : 

 spadix 18'-24' long, with flattened stalks, slender much-flattened primary branches 

 8'-10' long and light orange-colored slender terete flower-bearing branches l^'-3' 

 long, and pale reddish brown spathes coated toward the ends with pale pubescence. 

 Flowers opening in June and irregularly also in the autumn on ridged spreading 

 pedicels ^' long, with an orange-colored ovary surmounted by an elongated style 

 dilated into a rose-colored stigma. Fruit ripening at the end of six months, from 

 V-|' in diameter, bright green at first when fully grown, becoming deep violet color, 

 with succulent very juicy flesh, ultimately black and lustrous; seeds light tawny 

 brown. 



A tree, with a stem slightly enlarged from the ground upward, 15-25 high, 4'-6' 

 thick, covered with pale blue rind, and surmounted by a broad head of leaves at first 

 erect, then spreading and ultimately pendulous. "Wood used for the piles of small 

 wharves and turtle crawls. The soft tough young leaves are made into hats and 

 baskets. 



Distribution. Dry coral ridges and sandy flats from the shores of Bay Biscayne 

 along many of the southern keys to the Marquesas group, Florida. 



3. SABAL, Adans. Palmetto. 



Unarmed trees, with stout columnar stems covered with red-brown rind. Leaves 

 flabellate, tough and coriaceous, divided into many narrow long-pointed parted 

 segments plicately folded at the base, often separating on the margins into narrow 

 threads; rachises extending nearly to the middle of the leaves, rounded and broadly 

 winged toward the base on the lower side, thin and acute on the upper side; ligules 

 adnate to the rachises, acute, concave, with thin incurved entire margins; petioles 

 rounded and concave on the lower side, conspicuously ridged on the upper side, acute 

 and entire on the margins, with elongated chestnut-brown shining sheaths of stout 

 fibres. Spadix interfoliar, stalked, decompound, with a flattened stem, short branches, 

 slender densely flowered ultimate branches, and numerous acuminate spathes, the 

 outer persistent and becoming broad and woody. Flowers solitary, perfect, calyx 

 tubular, unequally lobed, the lobes slightly imbricated in the bud; corolla deeply 

 lobed, with narrow ovate-oblong concave acute lobes valvate at the apex in the bud; 

 stamens 6, those opposite the corolla-lobes rather longer than the others, with subu- 

 late filaments united below into a shallow cup adnate to the tube of the corolla and 

 ovate anthers, their cells free and spreading at the base; ovary of 3 carpels, 3-lobed, 

 3-celled, gradually narrowed into an elongated 3-lobed style truncate and stigmatic 

 at the apex; ovule basilar, erect. Fruit a small black 1 or 2 or 3-lobed short-stemmed 

 berry with thin sweet dry flesh. Seed depressed-globose, marked on the side by the 

 prominent micropyle, with a shallow pit near the minute basal hilum, a thin seed-coat, 

 and a ventral raphe; embryo minute, dorsal, in horny uniform albumen penetrated 

 by a hard shallow basal cavity filled by the thickening of the seed-coat. 



Sabal belongs to the New World, and is distributed from the Bermuda Islands 

 and the south Atlantic and Gulf states of North America, through the West Indies 

 to Venezuela and Mexico. 



Of the eight species now recognized four inhabit the United States; of these two 

 are small stemless plants. 



The generic name is of uncertain origin. 



