101 YUCATAN TREES INDEX

PAUROTIS PALM

Along the coasts, often in the neighborhood of mangroves, sometimes you see tall fan-palms looking like those below:

PAUROTIS PALM

At first glance they could be Chit Palms but their trunks are more slender and their fronds are divided into more and stiffer leaflets that the Chits'. These are Acoelorrhaphe wrightii. In the Florida Everglades this same species is known as the Everglades Palm, but that won't do in the Yucatan, where there are more of them. Often in English they're known as Paurotis Palms so that's what we'll call them.

Up close, Paurotis Palm petioles also differ from Chit petioles by bearing large, broad-based, forward-curved spines like those shown at the left, while Chit petioles bear none. In the mangroves, Paurotis Palms mostly occupy the edges, avoiding the most flooded areas.

PAUROTIS PALM spines on petioles

You could say that Chits favor sand while Paurotis Palms go for mud, but not mud where water stands for too long.

101 YUCATAN TREES INDEX