Huicungo

The Essence

"Astrocaryum huicungo is a spiny, clustering palm endemic to northern Peru. Kahn (2008), who designated it the type species of his section Huicungo, maps it to the lower Huallaga river valley around Moyobamba, Tarapoto and Yurimaguas, and records its habit as caespitose, large-leafed and subacaulescent to short-stemmed. The stems are mainly subterranean, in time reaching about 2 m tall and 15-18 cm in diameter, and each carries 8-15 pinnate leaves up to 7 m long including the petiole; long sharp spines arm the trunk and parts of the leaves. The fruit has a setose (bristly) epicarp, is obovoid and roughly 65-75 mm long by 37-44 mm wide, with orange flesh around a single large seed. For so obscure a palm the local uses are unusually well recorded: the palm heart and the fruit are eaten, the immature endosperm is consumed and the juice of the fruit drunk; unopened young leaves are woven into hats and fans, with three leaves normally required to make one hat; the new leaf sprout is worked into a spinning basket; stems are used, though only rarely, as house posts; and among the Shuar the petiole is reported to be made into blowgun darts. The hard, top-shaped endocarps are polished into beads and necklaces. Cultivation information is essentially absent - Useful Tropical Plants gives its cultivation details as 'Not known'."

The name was coined by Dammer but validly published by Burret in 1934 (Repertorium Specierum Novarum Regni Vegetabilis 35: 146), hence the author string 'Dammer ex Burret'. Henderson reduced it to Astrocaryum murumuru var. huicungo in Palms of the Amazon (1995: 245), which PALMweb lists as its homotypic synonym. It is currently accepted at species rank, and Kahn (2008) designated it the type of section Huicungo.