Guano palm

The Essence

"Copernicia glabrescens is a small Cuban fan palm, endemic to western and west-central Cuba, where Moya López (2022) records it from Pinar del Río, Artemisa and Mayabeque. Palmpedia gives a mature height of about 6 m (20 ft) and a spread near 1.5 m (5 ft), with stiff, circular costapalmate leaves that are light green above and waxy gray beneath, carried on a short, relatively slender trunk clad in old leaf bases. Unusually for the genus it suckers weakly: Palmpedia and Wikipedia both call it the only clustering Copernicia. POWO accepts two varieties, var. glabrescens and var. ramosissima. Both horticultural sources rate it slow-growing, and the IUCN assessed the species as Least Concern in 2016. No flower or fruit measurements were found in the sources consulted."

Odoardo Beccari validly published the name in Webbia 2: 170 (1907), attributing it to "Wendl., named in Wright Pl. Cub."; earlier listings by Sauvalle (1871) and Gómez de la Maza (1893) carried no description and are nomina nuda. Moya López (2022) argues the correct citation is therefore Copernicia glabrescens Becc., and treats the widely used "H.Wendl. ex Becc." — still the form given by POWO and GBIF — as an incorrect author citation. It was the second Copernicia described from Cuba and one of three Beccari named in 1907, alongside C. curtissii and C. macroglossa. Charles Wright (1811–1885), considered one of the most important naturalists of his era and a major contributor to knowledge of the Cuban flora, collected no other Copernicia, and the name rests on his specimen Wright 3968. With the Berlin material destroyed, Dahlgren and Glassman (1963) designated Wright 3968 at the Arnold Arboretum herbarium (A) as lectotype, and Moya López (2022) specified the exact sheet, A 00028318. Palmpedia's photo gallery documents cultivated specimens at the La Habana Botanical Garden in Cuba, Leu Gardens in Florida and Lyon Arboretum in Hawaii.