6. ROYSTONEA Cook. Royal Palm. Unarmed trees, with massive stems enlarged near the middle, and terminating in long slender bright green cylinders formed by the densely imbricated sheaths of the leaf-stalks. Leaves equally pinnate, with linear-lanceolate long-pointed unequally cleft plicately-folded pinnæ inserted obliquely on the upper side of the rachis, folded together at the base, with thin midribs and margins; rachis convex on the back, broad toward the base of the leaf and acute toward its apex; petioles semicylindric, gradually enlarged into thick elongated green sheaths. Spadix large, decompound, produced near the base of the green part of the stem, with long pendulous branches and 2 spathes, the outer semicylindric and as long as the spadix, the inner splitting ventrally and inclosing the branches of the spadix. Flowers monœcious, in a loose spiral, toward the base of the branch in 3-flowered clusters, with a central staminate and smaller lateral pistillate flowers, higher on the branch the staminate in 2-flowered clusters; calyx of the staminate flower of minute broadly ovate obtuse scarious sepals imbricated in the bud, much shorter than the corolla; petals nearly equal, valvate in the bud, ovate or obovate, acute, slightly united at the base, coriaceous; stamens 6, 9, or 12, with subulate filaments united below and adnate to the base of the corolla, and large ovate-sagittate anthers, the cells free below; ovary rudimentary, subglobose or 3-lobed; pistillate flowers much smaller, ovoid-conic; sepals obtuse; corolla erect, divided to the middle into acute erect lobes incurved at apex; staminodia 6, scale-like, united into a cup adnate to the corolla; ovary subglobose, obscurely 2 or 3-lobed, 2 or 3-celled, gibbous, the cells crowned with a 3-lobed stigma becoming subbasilar on the fruit; ovule ascending. Fruit a short-stalked drupe with thin crustaceous flesh. Seed oblong-reniform, marked by the conspicuous fibrous reticulate branches of the raphe radiating from the narrow basal hilum, and covered with a thin crustaceous coat; embryo minute, cylindric, lateral, in uniform albumen. Roystonea is confined to the tropics of the New World, where two or three species occur. The genus as here limited was named for General Roy Stone of the United States army. 1. Roystonea regia Cook. Royal Palm. _Oreodoxa regia_ H. B. K. [Illustration: Fig. 104]