branchless

1866, Mark Twain, “Equestrian Excursion,” March, 1886, in Letters from the Sandwich Islands Written for the Sacramento Union by Mark Twain,, Stanford University Press, 1938, p. 40, A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoa-nut trees, with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy feet and topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters of cocoa-nuts—not more picturesque than a forest of colossal ragged parasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be.

1886, [Henry H. Sweet], Palmistry; or, the Science of Reading the Past, Present and Future, in the Language of the Hands, New York: The Serial Leaflet Publishing Co., p. 21, One long, clear, branchless line indicates great distinction in some one thing; but if dividing into branches, or accompanied by parallel lines of strength equal to its own, there is danger that multiplicity of aims will strangle success.