LILIACEAE 
173 
palms cannot well be overestimated. They furnish fibre, timber, sugar, 
starch, oils, fats, resin and wine, while the date palm supplies millions 
of human beings with their daily food in Arabia and in nearly the whole 
of Africa north of the equator. In addition to the fruit nearly every 
part of the date tree is converted to useful purpose. 
Leaves fan-shaped; flowers perfect . 1 . Washingtonia. 
Leaves pinnate : flowers dioecious. 2. Phoenix. 
1. WASHINGTONIA Wendl. Fan Palm 
Trees with fan-shaped much folded blades and long petioles armed 
with stout hooked spines along the margins. Fruit a berry. (In honor 
of President Washington.) 
1. W. filifera Wendl. California Fan Palm. Columnar tree 5 to 
22 m. high, sometimes clothed to the ground with dead leaf-bases; leaves 
8.6 to 17 dm. long; berries black, oval, 6 to 7 mm. long.—Moist spots, 
easterly and northerly sides of the Colorado Desert; cult, as an avenue 
tree. 
2. PHOENIX L. 
Trees. Leaves pinnate, spreading, recurved, folded upwards and 
lengthwise; petioles spiny. Fruit a berry or drupe. (The old Greek 
name, perhaps from the Egyptian phoenix, the tree again sending up a 
living green tuft after fire.) 
Leaves rather robust, coarse...1. P. dactylifera. 
Leaves very slender, graceful.2. P. canariensis. 
1. P. dactylifera L. Date Palm. Stem erect, 20 to 30 m. high: 
leaves glaucous, rather robust, coarse; leaflets linear-lanceolate, 2 to 3.8 
dm. long, strongly complicate; fruit cylindrical-elliptical, 2.4 to 4.8 cm. 
long.—Cult, from Arabia. Date orchards are an important industry in 
the Coachella Desert in Riverside Co. 
2. P. canariensis Hort. Canary Palm. Like no. 1 but more slender 
and graceful in all its parts; leaves very slender, green, more numerous: 
leaf-stalks greenish yellow.—Cult, from Canary Isis, as an ornamental 
tree. 
LILIACEAE. LILY FAMILY 
Perennial herbs, rarely shrubs or trees. Stems from bulbs, corms or 
rootstocks. Flowers regular. Perianth with 6 lobes or segments. Sta¬ 
mens 6. Styles 1 or 3. Ovary superior, 3-eelled, becoming a capsule 
or berry.—-Species about 1700, in all parts of the world. The family in¬ 
cludes a few food plants, some bast-fibre plants (Phormium tenax or 
New Zealand Flax) and a large number of ornamentals. 
A. Fruit a pod. 
Herbs. 
Styles 3 and distinct; perianth-segments white with green glands at base. 
1. Zygadenus. 
Style 1, entire or 3-lobed or 3-parted. 
Plants without rootstocks. 
Stems from a tunicated bulb or conn. 
Flowers with bracts. 
Flowers not in umbels. 
