Pomona College Journal op Economic Botany 403 



Seetio A. Eiithrinax (porothrinax Wendl.) 



Seed with albumen traversed from base to top by the raphal intrusion 

 of the integument. 



1. Flowers and fruits borne on a long pedicel. 



Fruit 5 mm. or slightly more in diameter. Leaves green on 

 both surfaces, but on the lower sprinkled with very small, light- 

 colored, elongate dots. T. wendlandiana 



2. Flowers and fruits sessile. 



Leaves slightly glaucescent, or slightly silvery and obsoletely 

 dotted on the lower surface. Fruits 4 mm. in diameter. T. drudei 

 Sectio B. Typhlothrinax. 



Seed with albumen more or less penetrated by a basal intrusion of 

 the integument, but not traversed throughout from base to top.* 



Flowers and fruits sessile. Leaves slightly silvery-white on 

 the lower surface, and, also, .closely sprinkled with very small, 

 elliptical, ferrugineous dots. T. punctidata 



Thrinax wendlandiana Becc. in Webbia di U. Mart. II (1907), 265. T. 

 martii Gris. et Wendl. PI. Cub. 221 (nomen ex Sauv. Fl. Cub. n. 2373. 

 T, parviflora (non Sw.?) Sauv. Fl. Cub. 1. c. Porothrinax pumilio 

 Wendl. ex Sauv. Fl. Cub. 1. c. 



This is a graceful palm which has the trunk elongate, cylindrical, rather 

 slender, usually slightly bent at the base or ascendent, rising from an 

 enlarged subbulbous base, which is entirely formed of fine rootlets very 

 closely packed together. The surface of the stem is obscurely marked by 

 annular rings and is somewhat rimose. The crown is not very dense and 

 the leaves have their blades borne by slender petioles, which have their bases 

 immersed in a mass of pure white and soft cottony tomentum ; the old 

 leaves are suddenly reflexed and hang for a certain time below the living 

 crown. 



T. wendlandiana is easily distinguishable among the Cuban species of 

 the genus by its long pedicellate flowers and fruits. The fruit is 5 mm. in 

 diameter, and has the surface more or less granulose when dry; the seed is 

 traversed from base to top by the intrusion of the tegument. The flowers 

 have six stamens with very slender filiform filaments, and long, very narrow, 

 linear anthers. 



The leaf has the blade green on both surfaces, slightly paler on the 

 lower, which is sprinkled with very small scales, in the form of light- 

 colored linear-elliptical dots. 



Perhaps T. wendlandiana is not sufficiently distinct, as a species, from 

 the true T. parviflora growing in Jamaica; and, probably, it is only a geo- 

 graphical form of this latter species. 



It differs from T. parviflora mainly by its stamens having the filaments 

 longer and narrower, and by the narrower and longer anthers. Besides, the 



*This character is not so important as might be at first supposed, for I have found 

 it rather variable, as in T. karrisiana, where occasionally the seed is not completely tra- 

 versed by the intrusion. 



