27 
This ‘Desert Palm’ is said by Dr. Parry to have been 
noticed by the botanists of the Mexican Boundary Survey, and 
this would throw its first observation by plantsmen back to 1855, 
but the first reference to it in literature appears to be by Dr 
Cooper (Smithsonian Report, 1860: 342. 1861) who erro- 
neously and doubtfully referred it to Brahea dulcis Martius, a 
outh American palm. It was early planted at the missions. 
A very interesting account of it appears in Garden and Forest, 3: 
51, 1890, written by Mr. G. B. Parish. It is known in souther 
California also as Fan Palm and San Diego Palm, and additional 
notes upon it are given by Mr. S. B. Parish in the same volume 
of that journal (3: 542), where he discusses the probability of 
its being W. robusta and not W. filamentosa. 
There is a fine specimen of the Desert Palm in the conserva- 
tories of the National Botanical Garden at ie iat with a 
trunk about 4 meters high, leaf-stalks 1 “dm the base, 
the large leaves nearly 2 meters in cane. Me ae tells 
me that this plant is about 30 years old, and that he raised it 
from seed given him by a congressman from California. 
Watson, in 1889 (Proceedings Amer. Acad. 24: 79) described 
a third species from specimens sent by Dr. E. Palmer fr 
Guaymas, Sonora, under the name Washing/onia ae ce 
palm grew in secluded cafions in the mountains. Watson re- 
marks that it differs from the others in its more slender leaf- 
stalks, paler leaves and smaller fruit; the leaf-stalks are described 
by him in the same — the next year, from specimens col- 
lected by Palm La Paz, southern Lower California, as 
armed with stout eee prickles as in vodusta, but these are 
partly covered with a web of woolly hairs. He records that the 
Guaymas plant reaches 8 meters in height with a trunk a foot in 
diameter, and that its fruit is used for food by the Indians. We 
have young plants raised from seed supposed to be of this 
species, 
In revising the nomenclature of the arborescent flora of the 
United States, Sudworth noticed that the name [Vashingtonia, 
applied to these beautiful and interesting palms by Wendland, 
was preoccupied by its use for other plants by authors previous 
