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(Last Modified On 10/24/2012)
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(Last Modified On 10/24/2012)
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Genus
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PHYTELEPHAS Ruiz & Pav.
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Common
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Ivory-nut Palm
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PlaceOfPublication
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Syst. Veg. 299. 1798.
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Synonym
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Elephantusia Willd. Sp. P1. 4:1156. 1805.
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Description
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Dioecious- pinnate-leaved mostly heavy palms with trunks inclined or more or less creeping at first and bearing roots, spadices infrafoliar, borne near or at the surface of the ground, fragrant in bloom, frequently in colonies and often almost to the exclusion of other vegetation, sometimes in clumps or "islas," staminate tree usually larger and more robust: leaves very long, ascending-arching with many alternate and subopposite long narrow- pinnae: staminate spadix a long com- pactly flowered simple and often recurved catkin with its short peduncle inclosed in 2 cymba-like spathe-valves above which there may be pointed bracts on the peduncle, the individual flowers with a simple toothed perianth and many stamens bearing anthers mostly shorter than the filaments; pistillate spadix a head or heads of several flowers at the summit -of a stout peduncle with 3 or 4 spathes, bearing a few long flowers with many slender staminodes about the 6- to 9-loculed promi- nent ovary from the center of which arises an extended style with 6-9 spreading or recurved stigmas at its apex; floral envelopes imbricate, sepals 3, petals 6 or more, and a few long white or whitish bracts exceeding the petals; each locule of the ovary containing a single erect -ovule attached to a central intrusion or placenta: fruit a flattened tuberculate body 12 cm. and more across and 7-10 cm. high con- taining within the brittle shell as many nutlets as there were locules in the ovary, the place of the styles in the center of the head being covered by large inflexed tubercle-like points; nutlets hard and heavy, wedge-shaped with thin edge toward the center and the back obtuse or rounded, surface covered with loose fibers; seed inside the firm shell of the nutlet, of its same general conformation, sometimes covered with rapheal ridges and markings but in other species smooth, embryo at the lower inner angle or corner near the hilum imbedded in very hard continuous ivory-like white plane albumen.
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Distribution
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Panama to Peru in damp places in valleys of streams, coastal areas and some- times on mountains of 1000 m.; species perhaps a half dozen
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Elevation
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1000 m
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Note
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not well under- stood, and accurate definitions yet impossible because of lack of type and authentic specimens. There appears to be much variation in the period at which the trunk assumes an upright direction and in the height it eventually attains, as well also as in the size and shape of the seeds. At first the interior of the seed is liquid or of a jelly-like consistency, but it eventually becomes exceedingly dense and hard and the albumen is used in industry as "vegetable ivory" for the making of but- tons, cane-heads and other small articles and the seeds are an article of exportation from their native regions. The great heads with angular spines and tubercles, often weighing several pounds, are striking-looking objects, earth-brown, glabrous, the processes usually strongly striate.
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