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. [Illustration: Fig. 101] 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. Distribution. Often forming extensive groves or small isolated clumps in wet usually alkali soil in depressions along the northern and northwestern margins of the Colorado Desert in southern California, sometimes extending for several miles up the cañons of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains; and in Lower California. Now largely cultivated in southern California, New Orleans, southern Europe, and other temperate regions. 5. ACŒLORRAPHE H. Wendl.