Palms of British Guiana. 263 
A. gynacanthum, Mart: 
{var. Munbacca Mart: {sp). ) 
Local Names. 
True Carib Weeri. 
Arawak Aroacooshi.* 
Warrau Hee. 
This palm is to me the most familiar representative of 
what may be called a second section of the genus Astro- 
caryum ; the other section being best represented by 
A. tucuma, Mart. The differences are possibly rather 
such as readily catch the eye of one seeing the whole 
plant than such as admit of botanical description from 
herbarium specimens. The generally smaller size of the 
Munbacca section is a first mark. More important and 
effective is the angle at which the leaves in Munbacca 
and its allies stand out from the upright stem ; this 
angle being such that the whole head of the plant may 
be very aptly described as ( umbrella-shaped'. In 
A. tucuma and its allies, on the other hand, the leaves 
are very much more erect. Again, in the Munbacca 
set the upper surface of the pinnae is almost entirely in 
the same plane as the upper surface of the mid-rib. In 
the tucuma set, on the other hand, the much weaker 
pinnae curve away from the mid-rib almost immediately. 
Lastly, though this character does not seem to me quite 
so well ascertained, the spines seem to be set on the 
stem in the Munbacca set more regularly, and in very 
narrow rings separated from each other by wide bare 
spaces, rather than in deep and almost contiguous bands 
* Aroacooshi : ' tiger's eye' ; Aroa is the Arawak name for the jaguar 
or ' tiger,' ; cooshi means ' eye.' The name of another plant, I am not 
certain what it is, is Haimara Cooshie, i.e. the eye of the haimara, a 
well-known fish (ErythrinusJ, 
