Cook: NOMENCLATURE OF THE ROYAL PALMS 353 
Trunk columnar ; spathes fusiform or subcylindric; branches of spadix with bracts 
rudimentary or wanting ; seed deeply ruminate. 8. 
8. Stigma of ripe fruit lateral ; embryo basal; ete not stoloniferous. Genus 
AcRISTA Cook ; type, A. magn: Cook, Porto Ric 
Stigma of ripe fruit subapical ; em Glave ‘calle rous, cespitose. Genus 
Catis Cook; type, C. Murtiana ae (Euterpe oleracea Martius), Brazil. 
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A similar history of nomenclatorial lawlessness is concealed 
behind the exclamation point of certainty with which Messrs. 
Dammer and Urban associate the specific name caribaea and the 
royal palm of Porto Rico. Jacquin described from the Carib Islands 
in 1763 an Areca oleracea, which Martius assigned to the genus 
Euterpe, but he disregarded the priority of Jacquin’s specific name 
oleracea and made a new Euterpe oleracea of his own from Brazil. 
When Sprengel undertook the revision of Linnaeus’ Systema Vege- 
tabiliunt, published in 1825, he found both these oleracea species 
claiming entry under Zw/erpe, and renamed Jacquin’s plant Euterpe 
caribaca. Martius himself placed Euterpe caribaea Sprengel as a 
synonym under Oreodoxa oleracea in the third volume of his //s- 
toria Naturalis Palmarum (page 166), after he had come to look 
upon the royal palms as generically distinct from Euterpe. 
It seems certain, moreover, that Sprengel and Martius were 
dealing with a single palm. How Messrs. Dammer and Urban 
have brought the two species into the oleracea-caribaea complica- 
tion appears utterly mysterious, unless it be that they have disre- 
“2 SY eb os ae Meee 
ruits small, subglobose, with a very prominent subapical stigmatic scar ; pericarp 
thin, an fleshy ; a layer of coalesced fibres adhering to the smooth seed ; albumen 
uniform ; embryo basal. 
Plectis Oweniana sp. nov. 
Trunk smooth, ringed with leaf-scars, 25 meters and upwards; diameter at base 
25-30 cm.; at cia ro cm. or less; supported on a conical mass of thick roots with 
large fibrous root-ca 
eaf-sheaths over 1 50 cm. long; petiole 37-47 cm. long by 2.7 wide at apex ; 
rachis 267 cm, tapering more or less and produce ed into a slender fiber as long as the 
terminal pinnae ; total length of leaf 481 cm., basal pinnae 67 cm. by 1.1 cm., middle 
pinnae 81-93 cm. by 3. 5 cm., terminal pinnae 37 cm. by 1.2 cm. or less, generally split 
With age into narrow grass-like shreds 5 mm. or less in width. Upper surface of rachis 
flat at base but gradually narrowed upward, the cross-section becoming subtriangular. 
Habitat : steep slopes and summits of mountains in the vicinity of Senahu, Alta 
era Paz, Guatemala, at an elevation of 600-9c0 meters. It is said not to occur in 
the Coban district further west. 
Native name in the Kekchi language “‘ Aaluute’’ ; also called ‘‘¢ernera”’ by the 
ladino population of Alta Vera Paz, 
