Spanish names: balli; bejuco de canastos ;,junco; junco 
de jaguay ; metambilla. 
Zapotec name: ba-ga-a. 
Desmoncus chinantlensis is a tall, stout-stemmed, sub- 
scandent shrub which is characteristically armed on the 
sheathing petioles with large, strong spines. The leaf 
blades are pinnate; the pinnae, elongate-elliptic. 
The only representative of the genus in Mexico, 
Desmoncus chinantlensis is a very localized endemic, oc- 
curring in the District of Choapam (the so-called ‘‘Chi- 
nantla’’) of northeastern Oaxaca (where Liebmann col- 
lected the type material in 1842) and possibly in the 
adjacent portion of Vera Cruz. One sterile collection 
(H. Ross 1122) from the isthmus region of Vera Cruz 
has been referred to D. chinantlensis by Burret (Fedde 
Repert. 86 (1934) 201). Standley (Contrib. U.S. Nat. 
Herb. 23 (1920) 84) has stated that plants of this genus 
are said to occur in Tabasco; while Desmoncus is to be 
expected in Tabasco, I have not been able to find any 
collection of it from that state. 
Desmoncus chinantlensis is very abundant in the rain- 
forests on the Atlantic slopes of the mountains of the 
District of Choapam. It is one of the most conspicuous 
of the several genera of low palms ( Bactris, Chamaedorea, 
Eleutheropetalum, Geonoma, Hewapetion, Reinhardtia, 
etc.) which are well developed in the forests of this re- 
gion. 
In 1933, Bailey (Gentes Herb. 3 (1933) 89-92) con- 
cluded that a collection of Desmoncus from Barro Colo- 
rado Island, Panama, which had been identified as J. 
polyacanthos Martius, was ‘‘probably D.chinantlensis.”’ 
He pointed out that the Panamanian material matched 
the type collection of D.chinantlensis very closely. Stat- 
ing that no illustration of Desmoncus chinantlensis was 
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