In this genus, of which the hat palm of Puerto Rico may be considered the type, it is proposed to accommodate the dendroid palms commonly referred to Sabal, the type of which is S. Adansonii Guersent. The most conspicuous difference between Inodes and Sabal is, of course, the fact that the former produces an upright trunk while the latter has only what might be called an underground rootstock, although such a distinction is quite artificial, both groups of species beginning life with a creeping axis which becomes erect in one and remains horizontal in the other. A much more important difference is to be found in the leaves which in Inodes have secured strength by the development of a midrib, a tendency early abandoned by Sabal in which the midrib is rudimentary and the middle of the leaf is the weakest part. The leaves of Sabal are adapted for standing erect and avoid resistance to the wind by being split down the middle. The leaves of Inodes which are held horizontal from an erect axis have attained the unique adaptation of a decurved midrib which braces the sloping sides of the leaf and effectively prevents the breaking above the ligule common in some of the species of Thrinax. It is true that leaves of young specimens of Inodes stand erect like those of Sabal and do not have the curved midrib, but even at this stage the midrib is relatively well developed and the blade opens out to an almost circular form instead of occupying an arc of 180 degrees or less as in the more strictly flabellate leaves of Sabal.
Further differential characters might be enumerated, such as the short ligule and the flat petiole of Sabal. The inflorescence and seeds also afford differences, but these points are unnecessary for diagnosis, and their proper expression will require careful comparative study of the species of both genera, since Sabal is not monotypic but includes at least two species from the Southern States and perhaps S. Mexicana Martius. Guersent’s S. Adansonii, the first binomial species to which the name Sabal was applied, is, to judge from the figure, the smaller of our species, while Jacquin’s Corypha minor may be the larger. Both species were described from hothouse specimens and the plates give no details really adequate for identification, but if there are but two species to be considered there can be little doubt that Jacquin’s drawing represents the larger of the two forms commonly referred to Sabal Adansonii, since the leaves are nearly four feet long with the mesial divisions united somewhat less than half way up. The basal segments are represented, however, as diverging horizontally and not obliquely as is usual in the living plants in the greenhouses of the Department of Agriculture.
Guersent maintained that he was dealing with the Sabal which Adanson had in mind in naming the genus, and made his specific name in accordance with that fact, treating Corypha minor Jacquin, Corypha pumila Walter and Chamaerops acaulis Michaux as synonyms. The relative merits of these names and of Chamaerops glabra Miller, which Dr. Sargent (Silva, 10: 38) has resurrected, are not likely to be easy of determination, but since the last was based on plants grown from seeds which came from Jamaica, it seems unwise to use it for United States species to which the description is inapplicable. Miller’s name may, however, replace Sabal taurina Loddiges which was also founded on a stemless Sabal supposed to come from Jamaica.
The species of Inodes are in a similar or even worse state of disorder. There is little use, for example, in transferring to the new genus the traditional name umbraculifera which was based by Martius on the Corypha umbraculifera of Jacquin, but not on Linnaeus’ species of the same name, which is a native of Ceylon. Present taxonomic methods forbid such generic transfers of misapplied names, so that the name Inodes Blackburniana (Sabal Blackburniana Glazebrook, Gardener’s Mag. 5: 52. 1829) should be used instead of the traditional Sabal umbraculifera of the conservatories, though the identity and origin of the species still remain in doubt.
Inodes causiarum sp. nov.
Trunk 45–75 cm. thick at base, 5–15 m. tall, columnar or slightly tapering upward; surface narrowly rimose or nearly smooth, light gray or nearly white. Leaf-bases splitting into rather brittle fibers, partly remaining compacted into long ribbons 5–8 cm. wide. Leaves about 4 m. long, the petiole subequal to the blade, considerably exceeded in length by the inflorescence. Petiole 3.8 cm. wide, distinctly carinate above near the end; ligule 4.2 cm. in diameter. Fruit grayish, 9–10 mm. in diameter; seed chestnut-brown, finely rugose or nearly smooth, 7–8 mm. in diameter; embryo oblique, at an angle of somewhat less than 45 degrees from the horizontal. Type specimen from Joyua (no. 154).
The palm-leaf hats manufactured in large quantities in Puerto Rico are made from the present species. The center of the hat industry is at Joyua, a small village on the western coast of the island some miles southwest of Mayaguez and west of Cabo Rojo. Here many hundreds of the palms are growing along the shore in a narrow belt of coral sand.
From the two species of Sabal recognized by Grisebach Inodes causiarum differs from umbraculifera in having the inflorescence much longer than the leaves, while the trunk and leaves are much shorter and thicker than in Sabal mauritiiformis a native of Trinidad and Venezuela which appears from Karsten’s figure, reproduced in the Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, to have neither the leaves nor the habit of an Inodes though there is no other genus to which it can be referred with greater propriety. The diameter of the trunk of the Trinidad palm described as S. mauritiiformis is given as from 12 to 15 inches, while I. causiarum is often two feet or more thick.
From the Florida palmetto, Inodes Palmetto (Corypha Palmetto Walter, Fl. Carol. 119. 1788) the Puerto Rico species differs most conspicuously in not retaining the old leaf-bases which give the trunk of the Florida palm so rough an appearance. The cause of this difference is doubtless to be found in the fact that as with most other palms the trunk of I. Palmetto grows to full size while the surrounding leaf-bases are still alive, but in the West Indian species the trunk tapers greatly, especially in young trees, and the leaf-bases are torn away by its gradual enlargement to full diameter. The existence in southern Florida of an Inodes having this last characteristic is a fact of much interest recently brought to my attention by Mr. E. A. Schwarz, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The specific distinctness of this palm was impressed upon Mr. Schwarz, not only by its naked trunk, different habit, and smaller size (5 m., instead of 10 to 20 m.), but also by the possession of a distinctly tropical insect fauna, quite different from that of the more northern palmetto with which he had previously been familiar.[[2]]
This new Florida species it gives me pleasure to name Inodes Schwarzii in honor of its discoverer, in whose opinion of its distinctness I have great confidence, although he makes no claims to botanical skill. It is confined, as far as observed by Mr. Schwarz, to the coral reef formation of southern Florida, the most accessible station visited being about one mile south of Cocoanut Grove on the coral reef of the mainland side of Biscayne Bay. In the vicinity of Snapper Creek, Inodes Schwarzii extends to the Everglades where it is met by I. Palmetto. It was also seen on the Perrine Grant about six miles from Cocoanut Grove; it seemed not to occur about Miami but reappeared with the appropriate formation and attendant fauna at New River, though again absent at Lake Worth. A photograph secured by Mr. H. J. Webber (negative 164) on Taby Island near Long Key shows an Inodes with a naked trunk and a smaller crown of straighter leaves than are normal for I. palmetto. Messrs. Swingle and Webber had also remarked the distinctness of the smooth-trunked palmetto of South Florida.