Sabal

• WordNet 3.6
  • n Sabal American dwarf fan palms
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• • n Sabal (Bot) A genus of palm trees including the palmetto of the Southern United States.
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• • n Sabal A genus of fan-palms of the tribe Corypheæ, including several palmettos. It is distinguished from the genera next akin, Washingtonia and Corypha, by its dorsal embryo, and is further characterized by bisexual flowers with a cup-shaped calyx and a deep-lobed imbricate corolla persistent unchanged after blossoming, by its six united stamens forming at their dilated bases a ring attached to the corolla-tube, and by its three-lobed and three-celled ovary, tapering into a robust columnar style which is basilar in fruit. The fruit is usually globose and one-celled, with a loose fleshy pericarp, and a single shining dark-brown roundish and depressed seed, with hard corneous albumen which is deeply hollowed in at the base. The 7 species are natives of tropical America, from Venezuela and Trinidad northward into Florida and South Carolina and the Bermuda Islands. They are thornless palms, some species low and almost stemless, others with a tall robust trunk ringed at the base and covered above with the remains of sheaths. The leaves are terminal, roundish, and deep-cleft; the flowers are small and smooth, white or greenish, and the fruit is small and black, borne on a large and elongated spadix which is at first erect, and inclosed in a long tubular spathe, from which hang many long and slender branches and branchlets. See palmetto and cabbage-tree, and cut in preceding column.
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• • n Sabal sā′bal a genus of fan-palms.
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