FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
153 
W ashing tonia, or California Fan 
Palms. 
Among the palms suitable to our soil 
and climate, I must assign the first place 
to the genus Cocos. This consists of 
the true cocoanut; of the tender soft- 
leaved section, including the beautiful 
Cocos plumosa, C. flexuosa and C. Ro- 
manzoffiana; of the dwarf and elegant 
C. Weddelliana and, most important of 
all, the species of the C. australis group. 
They are not only the quickest growers 
and the most ornamental and elegant 
palms, but many of them grow faster 
and better in our high pine land than any 
other palm, being particularly adapted to 
poor and rather dry soils. On my 
place in the high, dry pine region, 
self sown seedlings come up everywhere 
without any care. This genus is pre¬ 
eminently American, being found in 
many species in Brazil and extending 
southward to Argentina. Mostly the 
species are gregarious, like our Cabbage 
Palmetto, growing together in large 
groups or groves. 
Cocos nucifera , Linn., the true Cocoa- 
nut Palm, is at present a cosmopolitan, 
being found in all tropical coast regions 
of the world, never occuring far inland. 
Very likely, an inhabitant of the Amer¬ 
ican continents in remote times, it has 
found since times immemorial a home in 
all warm parts of the world, the waves 
of the ocean having acted as a mean? of 
distribution. In Florida it has evident¬ 
ly been introduced from the West Indies. 
It is a common and most conspicuous 
palm all along the east coast from Palm 
Beach—this far-famed winter resort 
takes its name from the groves of Cocoa- 
nut Palms along its beach—southward. 
On the west coast it grows as far north 
as Punta Gorda. The large groves of 
these palms all along the ocean form 
very impressive and lasting pictures in 
the mind of the lover of the beautiful. 
They thrive like native plants, fruiting 
heavily and being rarely injured by frost. 
In one of his interesting letters, Prof. C. 
T. Simpson of Little River writes me as 
follows: “I wish you could sit here by 
me, in this pavilion eighty feet out in the 
bay, on the end of the wharf and enjoy 
the breeze and the lovely view over and 
down Biscayne Bay, with a peep out 
through the keys in the open Atlantic. 
Down the shore along Lemon City the 
growth is largely tall mangroves where 
they have not been cut away, and, where 
they have, everybody has planted Cocoa- 
nut Palms until they look like a forest 
along the beach, from twenty to fifty 
feet high. Away down at the lower end 
of Lemon City a few scattered, tall ones 
cut the sky-line with beautiful effect and 
they always look better that way than in 
groves or rows. 
The Cocoanut generally bears all the 
time here and I have seen trees with a 
two-horse wagon load of nuts on at one 
time, but I have seen Cocoanut trees 
twenty-five feet high so scorched by the 
freeze that for months I thought they 
were dead.” 
Stoddard, in his delightful book “South 
Sea Idyls,” calls the Cocoanut palms “the 
exclamation points in the poetry of the 
tropical landscape.” 
In Polynesia this is the most valuable 
of all plants, supplying oil, clothing, all 
kinds of important utensils, food, drink 
in the shape of Cocoanut milk, and an ex¬ 
cellent palm wine is made from the sap 
