THE PALMS OF BRITISH INDIA AND CEYLON. 989 



erect. Fruit a globose drupe with juicy bitter flesh easily separable 

 from the thin-shelled tawny brown nut. Seed free, erect, slightly 

 flattened at the ends, with an oblong pale conspicuous subbasilar 

 hilum, a short-branched raphe, a thin coat, and uniform albumen 

 more or less deeply penetrated by a broad basal cavity ; embryo 

 lateral. 



Species. — At least ten are now generally recognized. 



Distribution. — Thrinax is confined to the tropics of the New 

 World and is distributed from Southern Florida through the West 

 Indies to the shores of Central America. 



Note. — Several beautiful and ornamental species of this genus 

 are cultivated in European hot-houses and Indian gardens ; but 

 with regard to their names mentioned in books, herbaria and 

 tickets of living specimens it is difficult to imagine a greater con- 

 fusion. Though the number of species is not great, Beccari does 

 not hesitate to say that " a critical revision of the literature on Thri- 

 nax would be a bold, if not an impossible undertaking." " There 

 are, besides," he continues, " numerous horticultural species which 

 are only known hy name or which have been described from the 

 leaves of young specimens and which cannot be recognized anymore." 



If an authority like Beccari speaks in these terms, nobody will 

 expect us to identify all the different species which, at present, are 

 growing in Indian gardens, sometimes without name, sometimes 

 with names not to be found in any book, and very often with 

 wrong names. 



The only way of clearing up the many doubts and uncertainties 

 and to arrive at a correct nomenclature will be to describe accu- 

 rately and with every possible detail the morphological structure 

 of flowering and fruiting specimens, to preserve leaves, flowers and 

 fruits, and wherever practicable, to take good photographs of young 

 and adult plants. 



We reproduce in our series the photographs of two evidently 

 different species, without adding the description, because we have 

 not seen the flowers of those plants. 



Plate XII-B shows a palm which is known in Indian gardens 

 under the name of Thrinax radiata, Lodd. The photograph was 

 taken by Eev. M. Maier in the Victoria Gardens of Bombay. 

 12 



