Maxburretia furtadoana (Maxburretia furtadoana)

Description

Clustering, dioecious, pleonanthic fan palm, spreading by basal suckers to produce clumps of up to 10 or more stems; stems to 3 m tall at maturity, rarely to 5 m, 5 cm in diam.; base of stem free of leaf sheaths, pale brown, with close vertical cracking and leaf sheath scars, upper 1-2 m or more of stem clothed with long-persisting leaf sheaths, the combined diameter 12-15 cm. Leaf sheath, when young, erect, sheathing, composed of 15 or more hard, coarse, woody fibers to 3 mm wide, the outer fibers softly brown-hairy, in age rotting and expanding to form an open network of dirty brown fibers, the free ends spiny, sticking out from the skin, thus producing a dense spiny covering to the stem; petiole to 50 cm long, in exposed plants shorter, rarely not more than 30 cm, in trunkless juveniles longer, sometimes up to 70 cm, unarmed, oval in cross section except at the base where semicircular, 4 X 3 mm in diam., pale yellowishgreen; lamina rounded in general outline, largely held stiffly in one plane, to 75 cm in diam., largest radius along midline, about 50 cm from insertion to tip of apical leaflet, lamina divided into 25-30 single-fold leaflets, in upper part of leaf divided to half the radius, the divisions decreasing in length towards the outer edges of the lamina, where divided to 90% of the radius, leaflets further divided at the apex to 1-5 cm, to 1.5 cm wide, upper surface pale green, more or less glabrous, marked with prominent longitudinal veins, transverse veins obscure, and lower surface covered with thin white wax, abaxial ribs yellowish, bearing chaffy brown hairs; abaxial hastula absent or minutely present as a thin flange about 3 mm in height, petiole scarcely continuing into the lamina, adaxial hastula present, triangular, flattened, erose, black-edged, with chaffy grey-brown hairs. Inflorescences unisexual, axillary, arching out of the leafaxils: staminate inflorescence usually more slender and more highly and divaricately branched than the pistillate, branching to 3 orders, 25-40 cm long, with 3-5 primary branches (partial inflorescences), axis flattened at base, to 5 mm wide, 3 mm thick, densely flocculent-hairy at edges; prophyll adnate to the axis, to 7 cm long, 7 mm wide, tubular, irregularly bilobed to 1 cm at apex,