114 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



much lighter than the hard exterior rim, containing numerous dark conspicuous fibro- 

 vascular bundles. The outer portion of the stem is made into canes, and the trunks 

 are sometimes used for wharf-piles and in construction. 



Distribution. Florida, hummocks on Rogue River twenty miles east of Caximbas 

 Bay, Long's Key, and the shores of Bay Biscay ne near the mouth of Little River; 

 common in the West Indies and Central America. 



Largely cultivated as an ornamental tree in tropical countries, and often planted 

 to form avenues, for which its tall pale columnar stems and noble heads of graceful 

 foliage make it valuable. 



7. PSEUDOPHCBNIX, 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 conspicu- 

 ously 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; rachises 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, witli 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 flow- 

 ered ultimate divisions, and compressed light green double spathes eroded on their 



thin dark brown margins. Flowers unknown. Fruit a stalked globose 2 or 3-lobed 

 orange-scarlet thin-fleshed drupe marked by the lateral style and surrounded below 

 by the withered remnants of a 3-lobed calyx, oblong reflexed petals, and 6 slender 

 spreading staminodia tipped with abortive anthers; peduncle abruptly enlarged at 

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



