Acrocomia Mart.

Tall single-trunked monoecious pinnate-leaved trees, very spiny (one excep-tion) on-bole and petioles and cymbas and sometimes on fruits; spines long and slender, commonly flattened, expanded or cushioned at base, usually black or at least very dark, not stiffly attached: leaves very long, becoming horizontal'and drooping, with very many pairs of narrow hanging long-pointed pinnae, commonly glabrous on the upper surface but often indefinitely pubescent on upper surface; petioles prickly on outer convex surface: spadices infrafoliar, consisting of a long central axis and short mostly simple ~side-branches or rachillae; cymbas 2, outer or primary one soon caducous, inner one persistent and often hanging as a dead body-long after the fruit has fallen: staminate flowers 5-7 mm. long, occupying-most of the length of the rachillae' and partially sunken in it, stamens 6;-pistillate flowers at the angles on the base of the rachilla, about 10 mm. long, partly im-mersed, ovary 3-celled: fruit a drupe-like body size of a walnut, 1-seeded by abortion, olive-green or yellowish, 3-4 cm. transverse diameter, mesocarp muci--laginous with fibers running through it (sometimes edible) and that dries to a cork-like interior that stoutly adheres to the nut; rind becoming thin and then brittle as an egg-shell; nutlet conical to almost globular, with 3 eyes or micropyles, albumen hard and continuous.