PLATE XXXIII.
Bactris tenuis, n. sp.
Iú, Lingoa Geral.
In this species the stem is not thicker than a goose quill, distinctly jointed and smooth. The leaves are terminal, four or five in number, and rather irregularly pinnate. The leaflets are elongate and acute, with produced points, four or five in number, on each side of the midrib, the terminal pair being the broadest. The petioles and their sheathing bases are covered with small, flat, black spines.
The spadices grow from below the leaves and are very small and unbranched. The spathes are fusiform, erect, persistent and smooth. The fruit is small, globose, and of a red colour.
This is one of the smallest of Palms, and in every part of its structure offers a striking contrast to the great Mauritia and other giants of the family. While they possess huge columnar stems a hundred feet in height and two feet in diameter, this has but a slender stalk the thickness of a quill; and while their fruit bunches are the largest in the vegetable kingdom, the whole spadix of this species is smaller than a bunch of currants.
It is allied to B. cuspidata and to B. fissifrons of Martius, but seems sufficiently distinct from either of them. It grows exposed to the sun in the sandy Catinga forests of the Upper Rio Negro.
An entire spadix with fruit is represented on the Plate, of the natural size.
Pl. XXXIV.
W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp.
BACTRIS SIMPLICIFRONS. Ht. 6 Ft.