Grisebach has reported this species from Antigua and has redescribed it as follows, presumably from the Antigua specimens.
“‘Trunk low’; leaves pinnatisect: segments numerous, grass-like, linear-acuminate or the uppermost broader by cohesion, glaucous and minutely puberulous or glabrescent beneath, approximate, subequidistant, reduplicate at the base: rachis armed with very long black prickles and rare bristles, keeled above.—Flowers unknown; leaf segments (in our specimens, which are cut off, perhaps about the middle of the rachis) more than 30–jugal, 3‴–6‴ distant, 12″–8″ long, 4‴–2‴ broad, superior gradually shorter, the uppermost cohering ones sometimes 6‴–8‴ broad: prickles scattered or clustered, slender, the greatest 2″ long. Hab. Antigua: Wullschl., Blubber valley; [Portorico].” (Grisebach, Fl. Brit. W. I., 520. 1864.)
Curima gen. nov.
Trunk rather slender, internodes armed with scattered slender spines. Leaves and inflorescence also spiny, especially on the proximal parts. Pinnae numerous, strap-shaped, praemorse-truncate, imperfectly separated near the ends of the leaves. Inflorescence rather slender, once-branched; pistillate flowers mostly located near the bases of the branches. Fruit drupaceous, exocarp fleshy, not fibrous; foramina peripheral.
A palm related to Acrocomia and to the genera commonly grouped under the name Martinezia, to which Aiphanes and Marara are generally referred as synonyms. Reasons why none of these names appears available for the Puerto Rico species are given below. The characters of the fruit, with foramina near the middle, seem to indicate that Curima is not remotely related to Acrocomia, from which it differs superficially in the more slender habit, the truncate or praemorse leaves and the very long and lax inflorescence.
Curima colophylla sp. nov. [Plate 46.]
The solitary trunk rises from a mass of spiny roots somewhat smaller than those of the llume palm (Aeria). Diameter of trunk from 1–1.5 cm., often slightly thinner near the ground, though showing no such tendency to bulge as appears in Roystonea, Aeria and Acrocomia. The surface of the internodes is rather sparingly provided with needle-like spines smaller and more slender than those of Acrocomia. On old trunks the spines are often more or less completely absent.
Leaves 2.13–2.5 m. long, with from 30 to 40 pairs of strap-shaped praemorse-truncate divisions shorter and broader as the end of the leaf is approached, and with a terminal undivided area several inches wide. There is no apparent tendency toward the arrangement of the leaf-divisions in clusters as in Martinezia caryotaefolia and other allied species.
The base, rachis, midribs and even the surfaces of the pinnae are beset with coarse black or deep red spines which are closely appressed when young and become erect as soon as the surfaces are exposed, all the parts except the spines and the upper surfaces of the leaf-division being covered at first with a light grayish or brownish scurfy coating which gradually disappears.
The inner spathe is narrowly fusiform and about 1 m. long. It splits to the level of the outer spathe revealing the spadix and its extremely spiny peduncle. The flowers are greenish cream colored in mass, paler and not so yellow as in Acrocomia. The pistillate flowers are relatively very few and located near the base of the simple branches.