152 



SHORTER NOTES 



The Florida Royal Palivl — As previousl}' recorded in 

 Journal of the New York Botanical Garden, 5 : I 31, I visited, in 

 company with Professor P. H. Rolfs, in March of this year, the 

 colony of royal palms on Paradise Key in extreme southern 

 Florida. I also visited with him another colony of these trees 

 near Lemon City, a few miles north of Miami. Having in mind 

 the proposition of Mr. O. F. Cook, that the Florida royal palm 

 is a distinct species from the tree of Cuba, I carefully examined 

 these trees and collected material from them, in order to satisfy 

 myself as to the value of Mr. Cook's suggestion. The previous 

 spring and autumn I had spent in Cuba and had become inti- 

 mately acquainted with the tree there, obtaining abundant speci- 

 mens for study. I wish to record that my observations are con- 

 clusive, I think, to show that the species are absolutely identical 

 in foliage, inflorescence, and fruit, and that the greater size 

 claimed by Mr. Cook for the Florida tree, does not hold for those 

 that I examined at either point in Florida. As to the bulging 

 trunk which Mr. Cook apparently thinks so characteristic, I 

 would say that that occurs also in the Florida tree. There is a 

 difference in habitat, however, between the greater number of 

 royal palms of Cuba, which grow most abundantly on the up- 

 land, though I have repeatedly seen them growing on the borders 

 of marshes, and the Florida trees, which stand just above the 

 general level of the Everglades, on a low rocky ledge, amid a 

 dense undergrowth of shrubs. 



It should be said that I have not seen the colony of trees from 

 which the specimen came on which Mr. Cook bases his Roystonca 

 Floridana [Curtiss, no. 2676), which grow on the western border 

 of the Everglades, some miles from the trees visited by us, so it 

 is within the limits of possibility that the tree of the southeastern 

 Everglades and that of the western Everglades are different, but 

 an examination of a cotype of Mr. Cook's species does not give 

 much chance for that view to be correct. I am therefore inclined 

 to regard Roystonca Floridana as a straight synonym of Roystonea 

 rcgia. N. L. Bkitton. 



