Palm Leaf, or Palm Leaf Rag, is one of Joplin's few pieces tinged with a sense of melancholy. It is easy to understand the mood here since the composer was not happy in 1903 when he wrote this charming ragtime piece: that year the opera company he had formed failed, owing to the theft by a company member of a substantial sum from box office receipts. Still, while the music in Palm Leaf is hardly as joyous and effervescent as that in Maple Leaf Rag, for example, it is nevertheless attractive and quite memorable. The pacing in Palm Leaf Rag is relatively slow, its music sounding as though it wants to be perkier and more playful, but must hold back for lack of energy or other dispirited feeling. Still, the main theme is catchy in its lively but unhurried bounce and subtle sense of color. The imaginative secondary material does not offer more sunshine, remaining in the same somewhat gray mood for the main theme. Some pianists today play this piece at a fast tempo and thus impart an artificially livelier manner to the work than the composer had intended. This piece has a duration of about four minutes.

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