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Home , Chelyocarpus, Itaya, Thrinax

le88l HENDERSON:

Principes,32(3), 1988, pp,

Itaya Revisited

Anonrw HnnonRSoN New York Botanical Carden, Bronx, Neu York, NY 10458

From April to June I960 Harold Moore , Carludouica palmata, in the collected palms in . On 13 May he Cyclanthaceae). Later, when Moore was travelled by boat from Iquitos up the Rio back in Cornell and writing his report on Itaya to a place called Varadero de Oma- the trip, he called the coryphoid palm from guas. Here there is a short overland trail the Rio Itaya Chelyoc&rpus wallisii. which connects the Itaya to the Rio Ama- Moore returned to the Rio Itava twice" zonas. While crossing this trail Moore found on 5 March I967 and 20 DecemberI 974. "falso a small, fan-leaved, coryphoid palm. On the 1967 trip he found the bom- Although the palm was not flowering he bonaje" in flower. Moore realized that it thought it belonged to the Chely- could not be a Chelyocarpzs. The sepals ocarpus. Local people occasionally used and petals were connate and there were the leaves of the palm for thatching, and numerous stamens and a single carpel. "falso called it bombonaje" (bombonaje is Furthermore, the petiole was split near the the name usually given to the Panama hat base. None of these characters usually

l. Leaf of ltaya amicorum from Santa Maria del Ojeal. PRINCIPES lVoL. 32

2. Inflorescence of ltaya amicorum. Note split petiole at bottom left of picture'

occurred in Chelyocarpa.s, and in 1972 est in the area is being destroyed. Juan Moore described the palm as a new genus, Ruiz, a botanist from the Herbario Ama- Itaya, and called the speciesI. amicorum. zonense in Iquitos, also showed me a sec- For several years thereafter ltaya ami- ond population at Santa Maria del Ojeal corum was only known from the type local- on the Rio Sinchicuy, a small tributary of ity. In a 1977 paper on the conservation the Amazonas, and about 70 km northeast status of palms Moore wrote the following of the type locality (Fig. I). ".. of I. amiconlm, . the species is still Itaya am.icorum is probably relatively known from fewer than 100 individuals in common in a restricted region of eastern what constitutes, essentially, a single poP- Peru. It is similar to, and confused with' ulation adjacent to a clearing." Fortu- Chelyocarpu.s. There are at least two nately we now know that the range of species of in the Iquitos Itaya is much wider than Moore supposed. region, but the two genera can easily be In 1973 the species was collected on the distinguished in the field by the petiole. In Brazilian side of the Rio Yavari, approxi- Itaya,the petiole and sheath are split near mately 200 km east of the type locality. the base (Fig. 2), while in Chelyocarpus This river forms the frontier between Peru they are not. This is the same vegetative and . character which distinguishes frorn In January l9BB I visited Iquitos' The . original population of palms still grows on As far as I know ltaya is not in culti- the Rio Itaya, and seemsto be reproducing vation. Quite a number of seeds were and more or less intact. However, the for- apparently taken to Iquitos recently and r9881 HENDERSON:ITAYA t3t planted,but failed to germinate.The hab- to grow in poorly drained acidic soils, often itat of the palm is tall lowland rainforest near streams. It is to be hoped that this below 300 m elevation.Rainfall is over interesting and attractive palm can be 2,500 mm per vear, and there are year broueht into cultivation. round high temperatures.The palm seems

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