556 Cook : A Synopsis of the 



edge, the other near the middle. The tips of the leaflets are of 

 the same material and are sometimes persistent as long corneous 

 appendices like those of the cultivated Howe a. 



The generic name Euterpe Gaertner, which is commonly applied 

 to a considerable series of American palms related to the present, 

 was in reality established for the Malayan genus for which the 

 name Calyptrocalyx Blume is now in use, Pinanga silvestris glo- 

 bosa Rumphius being cited by both Gaertner and Blume as the 

 original, in the one case, of Euterpe globosa, and in the other of 

 Calyptrocalyx spicatus. The origin and identity of the seed 

 described and figured by Gaertner have not been established, and 

 seem likely to remain in doubt ; but in describing Calyptrocalyx, 

 Blume argued -that the generic name should remain with the seeds 

 studied by Gaertner and declared that these did not belong to any 

 Malayan species but to some of the arecoid palms of the Mas- 

 carene Islands. This suggestion seems not to have been disposed 



of by Marti us or others, but the fact that Gaertner's fruits showed 

 an apical stigma seems to exclude them from the American group 

 with which the generic name has been associated. 



In making use of the name Euterpe for Brazilian palms Martius 

 cites Gaertner as author of the genus and states that it is of world- 

 wide distribution in the tropics. Gaertner's E. globosa is placed as 

 a synonym of E. oleracea * Martius, and Jacquin's older name Areca 

 oleracea stands in the same relation to Euterpe edtdis Martius, thus 

 rendering Euterpe oleracea Martius a specific homonym. Subse- 

 quently Martius claims the genus Euterpe for himself and expresses 

 doubt whether it is the same as that named by Gaertner, while 

 Drude in Engler and Prantl's Naturlichen Pflanzenfamilien says 

 "Euterpe Mart, (nicht Gaertn.)." Martius also admits that the West 

 Indian Areca oleracea Jacquin is distinct from the Brazilian species 

 of Euterpe, and redescribes it under the name Oreodoxa oleracea. 



A further complication connected with Acrista was brought to 

 light by finding that specimens collected by Sintenis (no. i5 2 5) in 

 the Luquillo Mountains in northeastern Puerto Rico and distributed 

 from the Berlin Botanical Garden as Oreodoxa oleracea belong to 

 the present genus, together with others collected in Martinique by 

 Hahn (no. 805) and identified at Paris. With the last, the local 



* Hist. Nat. Palmarum 2 : 29. 



