A palynological study in cocoid palms

Because the palm family is almost entirely tropical with many species of a very great size, it has attracted only a few botanists to study them. As a consequence palms are poorly represented in herbaria and little understood in almost every respect. Notably their taxonomy is in a very poor condition since many taxa are described on inadequate material which allows only an arbitrary interpretation and, moreover, the family is grossly overnamed. Hence the second author (1965) proposed a large-scale lumping in his critical treatment of the Suriname palms. The present paper is intended to give some palynological evidence to support a few of these lumpings on the generic level. Palynological evidence shall especially be rewarding in the genus Attalea in the broad sense inclusive of Maximiliana, Markleya, Orbignya. Parascheelea and Scheelea. These genera have been separated on the morphology of the staminate flowers only; no correlation with other characters could be worked out in a satisfactory way. Apart from the very distinct staminate flower types representing Attalea, Maximiliana, Orbignya, and Scheelea, in recent times also a few intermediate flower types have been found, again evaluated as separate genera; Markleya and Parascheelea. The main argument for accepting these single character genera is a feeling that the evolution of the staminate flowers in the palms has been very extraordinary. If this feeling is correct, it may be expected that the differences in the staminate flower morphology run parallel with the differences in the pollen morphology. To check this was one of the purposes of the investigation the results of which are presented in this paper.