A tree, rarely more than 30° high, with a trunk 8′—10′ in diameter. Distribution. Dry coral soil, on the shores of Sugar Loaf Sound, and on No Name and Bahia Honda keys, Florida; in Cuba. 2. COCCOTHRINAX Sarg. Small unarmed trees, with simple or clustered stems or rarely stemless. Leaves orbicular, or truncate at base, pale or silvery white on the lower surface, divided into narrow obliquely folded segments acuminate and divided at apex; rachis narrow; ligules thin, free, erect, concave, pointed at the apex; petioles compressed, slightly rounded and ridged above and below, thin and smooth on the margins, gradually enlarged below into elongated sheaths of coarse fibres forming an open network covered while young by thick hoary tomentum. Spadix interfoliar, paniculate, shorter than the leaf-stalks, its primary branches furnished with numerous short slender pendulous flower-bearing secondary branches; spathes numerous, papery, cleft at the apex. Flowers solitary, perfect, jointed on elongated slender pedicels; perianth cup-shaped, obscurely lobed; stamens 9, inserted on the base of the perianth, with subulate filaments enlarged and barely united at the base, and oblong anthers; ovary 1-celled, narrowed into a slender style crowned by a funnel-formed oblique stigma; ovule basilar, erect. Fruit a subglobose berry raised on the thickened torus of the flower, with thick juicy black flesh. Seed free, erect, depressed-globose, with a thick hard vertically grooved shell deeply infolded in the bony albumen; hilum subbasilar, minute; raphe hidden in the folds of the seed-coat; embryo lateral. Coccothrinax is confined to the tropics of the New World. Two species, of which one is stemless, inhabit southern Florida, and at least two other species are scattered over several of the West Indian islands. _Coccothrinax_, from κόκκος and _Thrinax_, is in allusion to the berry-like fruit. 1. Coccothrinax jucunda Sarg. Brittle Thatch. [Illustration: Fig. 98]