WAX PALMS— BOMHARD 3^9 



above sea level. Karsteii failed to give the exact type locality, 

 although he definitely placed it in the North Andean region. 



Two years ago, Mrs. Ynez Mexia informed me that she was about 

 to make a trip to western South America to secure specimens for the 

 Bureau of Plant Exploration and Introduction of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture and offered to collect some palm material 

 for me, if at all possible. It then seemed probable that her route 

 would take her into the Quindio region. I explained the methods of 

 collecting palm specimens, and supplied her with information con- 

 cerning the location of the wax palms, as well as with an outline 

 chart especially devised to cover the wax palms. Unfortunately, she 

 did not reach the Quindio Pass, but she obtained some excellent wax 

 palm material in Ecuador and made careful records on the charts. 

 The collection included an interesting species having tufted leaf 

 segments, 4 to 5 spathes, and a bulged trunk ; it grew near the Volcan 

 Chiles "In a dense forest on a precipitous mountain side at 9,842 feet, 

 on the road from Moldanado to Tulcan, Province of Carchi, Ecua- 

 dor" and is identifiable as ventricosuui^ a recently described species 

 (Notizblatt, 1929). Burret himself questions whether his species is 

 really distinct from Karsten's utilc^ the difficulty being that Kar- 

 sten's description makes no mention of the bulged trunk. Perhaps 

 this is the ventricose species Spruce saw in Ecuador in 1860 and 

 which he referred to as G. andicola (Notes of a Botanist, 1908). 



No account of the beauty and unusual character of the wax palms 

 would be complete without some reference to a massive wax palm 

 which Franz Engel discovered and which is today as much sur- 

 rounded with mystery, music, and poetry as it was when Engel de- 

 scribed it in 1865. Engel saw but three individual palms, one tall 

 and two smaller ones, in the Province of Tachira, near the Uribante 

 River in western Venezuela. It is found at 6,000 to 8,000 feet above 

 sea level in deep, shady woods, towering above the other trees. He 

 describes it as a "magnificent palm", from 150 to 200 feet tall; the 

 trunk is 2 feet through, and the leaves are 25 to SO feet in length — 

 the largest diameter and the longest leaves of all the wax palms. 

 The natives told Engel that it was customary to fell the trees to 

 secure the leaves for the making of straw hats and that it might be 

 difficult to locate specimens. After an arduous 3-day search, only 

 three palms were discovered. Engel was overjoyed to come upon 

 them at last but expressed the fear that perhaps he was destined to be 

 the only botanist to see them, while consoling himself with the 

 thought that the vast unexplored forests of the Cordilleras might 

 contain many more palms of this species. Perhaps it has actually 

 become extinct, since no one has added a single bit of information 



