Appearance
It is a stemless or short-stemmed palm with a trunk up to 2 m tall. The leaves are undivided, or pinnate with 3-9 leaflets, the terminal leaflet with a forked apex. The flowers are produced all year round, on upright inflorescences; they are monoecious, with complete temporal separation of the male and female stages. The flowers are pollinated by bats in the family Phyllostomidae. Because the flowers are made of a sweet chewable tissue they are much favoured by katydids, whose feeding reduces the number of flowers available to be pollinated.Naming
Four subspecies are recognized:#''Calyptrogyne ghiesbreghtiana'' subsp. ''ghiesbreghtiana'' - Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas
#''Calyptrogyne ghiesbreghtiana'' subsp. ''glauca'' A.J.Hend. - Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua
#''Calyptrogyne ghiesbreghtiana'' subsp. ''hondurensis'' A.J.Hend. - Honduras
#''Calyptrogyne ghiesbreghtiana'' subsp. ''spicigera'' A.J.Hend. - Belize, Guatemala
Evolution
The inflorescences host a species of mite which live and reproduce on the inflorescence and travel to new inflorescences by hitching a ride on the flower-visiting bats. The behaviour of parasitising another animal for transport but not food is known as phoresy. A similar phenomenon which has been more comprehensively surveyed are the mites that live in flowers visited by hummingbirds and are phoretic on these flower-visiting birds.References:
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