276 APPENDIX. 



numbers. Indeed, several palms not included in our enumeration are mentioned in the 

 sketches of the vegetation of Honduras, Guatemala, and other countries, which we 

 have compiled from various sources. 



Six of the genera are endemic, and seventeen of the remaining eighteen are restricted 

 to America. The distribution of the only one extending beyond America has already 

 been discussed. Of the species upwards of 95 per cent, are endemic, and the others 

 do not extend beyond America. Nearly two thirds of them belong to the genera 

 Chamcedorea, Geonoma, and Bactris. The first of these three genera is specially 

 characteristic of the Mexican and Central-American highlands, extending southward in 

 the Andes to Peru, but not reaching the West Indies; and upwards of forty species 

 have been described from within our limits. They are mostly small, slender, elegant 

 palms with reed-like flexible stems and small leaves; and some of them are perfect 

 miniature members of their order, not exceeding a foot in height. Perhaps the most 

 diminutive of all is Chamcedorea tenella, figured in the ' Botanical Magazine ' (t. 6584), 

 concerning which Sir Joseph Hooker wrote, " Our male specimen is nine inches high, 

 and the female seven, yet it ripened fruit well." A mean temperature of about 62°'5 F., 

 abundance of moisture, and shady situations are the conditions under which they 

 flourish best ; and they chiefly inhabit the oak-forests at elevations of 2000 to 4500 feet, 

 varying of course according to latitude and aspect. Thus, on the authority of Lieb- 

 mann's labels, Chamcedorea cataractarum grows near the cataracts of Chinantla at 1200 

 to 1500 feet; C. humilis in various localities at 1500 to 3000 feet; and C. pacaya, in 

 the barrancas of the Volcan de Chiriqui up to 7000 feet*. It is not certain what the 

 palms are that Liebmann had in view in the statement that species of Corypha and 

 Chamcerops reach an altitude of 8000 feet in the interior (see p. 147). But this is not 

 an improbable height, inasmuch as Oreodoxa frigida inhabits the Andes at 2000 to 

 2800 metres, while Euterpe andicola, the most alpine of all palms, reaches nearly 

 3000 metres. Geonoma and Bactris are genera of about 100 species each, chiefly 

 inhabiting the tropical regions ; thirty-seven of the former and fifty-four of the latter 

 are Brazilian, Only a few species reach Mexico, the bulk being from Costa Rica. 

 Conspicuous among the palms of the sea-shore and tropical zone of Central America 

 and Mexico are species of Oreodoxa, Soeratea, Thrinax, Acrocomia, Elceis, Cocos, and 

 Attalea. Heller f mentions that he saw trees of Oreodoxa regia at Cordova, which 

 were 150 feet high; but these were probably planted, as they are in many other places. 

 Morris \ regards it as an introduced palm in British Honduras, where, on the same 

 authority, 0. oleracea is abundant in the lowlands and on the banks of rivers. 



The endemic genera Malortiea, Beinhardtia, Asterogyne, Calypterogyne, Pholido- 

 stachys, and Weljia are all elegant palms, mostly of the slender habit and small size of 

 Chamcedorea. 



* Wagner in Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1863, p. 294. 



t Eeisen in Mexico, p. 109. $ The Colony of British Honduras, p. 68. 



