Distribution. Rich soil of the bottom-lands on the Bernado River, Cameron County, and near the mouth of the Rio Grande, Texas, and southward in Mexico in the neighborhood of the coast.
Frequently planted as a street tree in the towns in the lower Rio Grande valley.
4. WASHINGTONIA H. Wendl.
Trees, with stout columnar stems and broad crowns of erect and spreading finally pendulous leaves. Leaves flabellate, divided nearly to the middle into many narrow deeply parted recurved segments separating on the margins into numerous slender pale fibres; rachis short, slightly rounded on the back, gradually narrowed from a broad base, with concave margins furnished below with narrow erect wings, and slender and acute above; ligule elongated, oblong, thin and laciniate on the margins; petioles elongated, broad and thin, flattened or slightly concave on the upper side, rounded on the lower, armed irregularly with broad thin large and small straight or hooked spines confluent into a thin bright orange-colored cartilaginous margin, gradually enlarged at base into thick broad concave bright chestnut-brown sheaths composed of a network of thin strong fibres. Spadix interfoliar, stalked, elongated, paniculate, with pendulous flower-bearing ultimate divisions and numerous long spathes. Flowers perfect, jointed on thick disk-like pedicels; calyx tubular, scarious, thickened at base, gradually enlarged and slightly lobed at apex, the lobes imbricated in the bud; corolla funnel-formed, with a fleshy tube inclosed in the calyx and about half as long as the lanceolate lobes thickened and glandular on the inner surface at the base, imbricated in the bud; stamens inserted on the tube of the corolla, with free filaments thickened near the middle and linear-oblong anthers; ovary 3-lobed, 3-celled, with slender elongated flexuose styles stigmatic at apex; ovules lateral, erect. Fruit a small ellipsoidal short-stalked black berry with thin dry flesh. Seed free, erect, oblong-ovoid, concave above, with a flat base depressed in the centre, a minute sublateral hilum, a broad conspicuous rachis, a minute lateral micropyle, and a thin pale chestnut-brown inner coat closely investing the simple horny albumen; embryo minute, lateral, with the radicle turned toward the base of the fruit.
Three species of Washingtonia are known: one inhabits the interior dry region of southern California and the adjacent parts of Lower California, and the others the mountain cañons of western Sonora and southern Lower California.
The genus is named for George Washington.
1. [Washingtonia filamentosa] O. Kuntze. Desert Palm. Fan Palm.
Leaves 5°—6° long and 4°—5° wide, light green, slightly tomentose on the folds; petioles 4°—6° long and about 2′ broad at apex, with sheaths 16′—18′ long and 12′—14′ wide, and ligules 4′ long and cut irregularly into long narrow lobes. Flowers: spadix 10°—12° long, 3 or 4 being produced each year from the axils of upper leaves, the outer spathe inclosing the bud, narrow, elongated, and glabrous, those of the secondary branches coriaceous, yellow tinged with brown, and laciniate at apex; flowers slightly fragrant, opening late in May or early in June. Fruit produced in great profusion, ripening in September, ⅓′ long; seed ¼′ long, ⅛′ thick.
A tree, occasionally 75° high, with a trunk sometimes 50°—60° tall and 2°—3° in diameter, covered with a thick light red-brown scaly rind and clothed with a thick thatch of dead pendant leaves descending in a regular cone from the broad crown of living leaves sometimes nearly to the ground. Wood light and soft, with numerous conspicuous dark orange-colored fibro-vascular bundles. The fruit is gathered and used as food by the Indians.