NO. 7 A NEW PALM FROM COCOS ISLAND — COOK II 



mountain summits, and apparently requires somewhat open condi- 

 tions, like most of the palms with small fruits eaten by pigeons or 

 other birds. Many of the tropical forest trees, including some of the 

 palms, have very large seeds, allowing seedlings to grow taller in the 

 deep shade. The light requirements of Acrista were indicated by great 

 numbers of the seedlings, only a few inches high, growing in the leaf- 

 mold of a dense forest of tabonuco (Dacryodes hcxandra) near 

 Ysolina, south of Arecibo, visited in 1901. The forest floor was car- 

 peted with the small palms, but in the permanent twilight none of them 

 grew beyond the seedling stage. A photograph of this unusual pure- 

 stand forest appears in the "Economic Plants of Puerto Rico," by 

 O. F. Cook and G. N. Collins, Contributions from the U. S. National 

 Herbarium, volume 8, page 132, 1903. 



The genus Oreodoxa, in its original application to Oreodoxa acumi- 

 nata Willdenow, a mountain palm of Venezuela, apparently is much 

 closer to Acrista than to Catis, in having straight, naked branches, 

 widely spaced flower-clusters, the male flowers with large compressed 

 divergent pedicels, and the collar bracts very short, enclosing only the 

 lower part of the female flower-scar, not covering the pedicels of 

 the male flowers. These distinctive features are shown in Beccari's 

 drawings of specimens from Venezuela, published in "The Palms 

 Indigenous to Cuba." Beccari held that the name Oreodoxa was avail- 

 able for transfer to the royal palms, because Willdenow's Oreodoxa 

 belonged to Euterpe. In reality Martius did not transfer acuminata to 

 Euterpe , but listed it under Oreodoxa. The change of application ap- 

 parently occurred incidentally, through disregarding the original use 

 of Oreodoxa, by Willdenow and featuring the better-known royal 

 palms as representing that genus, instead of providing the new name 

 that was needed for the royal palms and later was supplied in 

 Roysfonea. 



A CLOSELY RELATED PALM IN GUATEMALA 3 



The ample material obtained by Dr. Schmitt allows many more 

 characters to be studied than are usually treated, descriptions of most 

 of the species being drawn from herbarium specimens alone. Sev- 

 eral features of the new palm have not been previously recognized, 

 some of them doubtless existing among the related types, but not yet 

 formulated. Statements of new characters can have little meaning 

 unless they take account of contrasting features of related forms. 

 The palms . are so different from other plants that many of the 



3 See description on page 22. 



