FIG. 6.-DATE PALM (PHOENIX DACTYLIFERA), A NATIVE OF NORTHERN AFRICA AND SOUTH-WESTERN ASIA WHERE IT HAS BEEN LONG CULTI VATED, NOW GROWN ALSO IN MEXICO AND THE S. W. UNITED STATES nut palm, Cocos nucifera, and the date palm, Phoenix &Idyll fera, are treated in separate articles. Sugar and liquids capable of becoming fermented are produced by Caryota areas, Cocos nucifera, Borassus flabellifer, Rhapis vinifera, Arenga saccharifera, Phoenix silvestris, Mauritia vinifera, etc. Starch is procured in abundance from the stem of the sago palm, Metroxylon, and others. The fleshy mesocarp of the fruit of Elaeis guineensis of western tropical Africa yields, when crushed and boiled, "palm oil." Coco-nut oil is extracted from the oily endosperm of the coco-nut. Wax is exuded from the stem of Ceroxylon andicolum and Copernicia cerifera. Edible fruits are yielded by the date, the staple food of some districts of northern Africa, and by the pejibaye or Guilielma of tropical America. The coco-nut is a source of wealth to its possessors; and many species, e.g., Areca sapida (cabbage-palm and others), are valued for their "cabbage," the terminal bud, whose removal causes the destruction of the tree. The famous "coco de mer," or double coco-nut, whose float ing nuts are the objects of so many legends and superstitions, is Lodoicea malivica. The tree is peculiar to the Seychelles. Its fruit is like a huge plum, containing a stone or nut like two coco nuts (in their husks) united together. Areca Catechu is cultivated in tropical Asia for its seeds (reca or betel nuts).
The only species that can be cultivated in the open air in Eng land, and then only under exceptionally favourable circumstances, are the European fan palm, Chamaerops humilis, the Chusan palm, better known as S. glabra, is native, a small species that extends eastward to Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, and North Carolina. The saw- or scrub-palmetto, Serenoa repens (formerly called S. serru
lata), covers large areas in pinelands and coastal plain from North Carolina to southern Florida and Mississippi. Another low or scrub palmetto, Sabal Etonia is native in peninsular Florida; and there are two tall or tree sabals or palmettos, the common cabbage tree, S. Palmetto, a coastal plant from North Carolina to Florida, but in the peninsular part of the latter state becoming widespread, and S. Deeringiana or S. Louisiana of southern Louisiana. The needle-palm, the low Rhapidophyllum Hystrix, ranges from Mis sissippi to Florida and South Carolina.
This is a fan-palm known by the long needles in the sheaths at the base of the plant.
All the other palms native in the United States are confined to Florida. They are in five genera, not counting the ubiquitous coconut as native : Thrinax, Coccothrinax and Acoelorraphe (Paurotis), fan-palms; Pseudophoenix and Roystonea (Oreodoxa). feather-palms. All of these plants are confined to the warmer or semi-tropical parts of Florida, practically from the latitude of Miami southward.
The Pseudophoenix is restricted, in Florida, to a few of the keys of the east coast. Roystonea is represented by a single species, the so-called royal palm, native on certain hammocks or islands in the Everglades.
More than 200 species of palms are recorded as planted in the continental United States. A few are known mostly as glass house subjects, although probably all are somewhere planted out side in the open or some of them perhaps under lath. They belong to more than 8o genera, as palm botany is now understood, and they represent many countries around the world. For the most part, the planted palms of Florida and California represent unlike sets of species, those in California having a strong Mexican char acter. (L. H. BA.)