Clinosperma bractealis is a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

 in the palm

Arecaceae

Arecaceae or Palmae , are a family of flowering plants, the only family in the monocot order Arecales. There are roughly 202 currently known genera with around 2600 species, most of which are restricted to tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate climates...

 family found in the rain forest of New Caledonia

New Caledonia

New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

. It grows in schists and serpentine soil

Serpentine soil

A serpentine soil is derived from ultramafic rocks, in particular serpentinite, a rock formed by the hydration and metamorphic transformation of ultramafic rock from the Earth's mantle....

. The genus is named for two Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 words meaning 'slanted' and 'seed', and the species epithet comes from Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 and translates to 'with bracts', describing the inflorescence.

Description

C. bractealis is a solitary-trunked palm which grows up to 15 m tall at a uniform 10 cm width. The gray to tan trunks are ringed by leaf scars up to the unusual, 60 cm tall crownshaft

Crownshaft

An elongated circumferential leaf base formation present on some species of palm is called a crownshaft.The leaf bases of some pinnate leaved palms form a sheath at the top of the trunk surrounding the bud where all the subsequent leaves are formed.The crownshaft...

, holding 12 - 15 pinnate

Pinnate

Pinnate is a term used to describe feather-like or multi-divided features arising from both sides of a common axis in plant or animal structures, and comes from the Latin word pinna meaning "feather", "wing", or "fin". A similar term is pectinate, which refers to a comb-like arrangement of parts...

 leaves

Leaves

-History:Vocalist Arnar Gudjonsson was formerly the guitarist with Mower, and he was joined by Hallur Hallsson , Arnar Ólafsson , Bjarni Grímsson , and Andri Ásgrímsson . Late in 2001 they played with Emiliana Torrini and drew early praise from the New York Times...

. At the base, the crownshaft bulges significantly to one side, giving it a distinct triangle shape. It is usually covered in a hairy tomentum as well as white wax and, depending on the concentration of each, may be brown to green to white in color. Each leaf

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

, recurving at its end, is 1.5 m long on 30 cm petioles being light to bright green in color. The stiff pinnae are once-folded with a prominent midrib, 90 cm long, and regularly arranged along the rachis.

The infrafoliar inflorescence

Inflorescence

An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Strictly, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed and which is accordingly modified...

 produces small, white to yellow, unisexual flowers on bright red branches, basally divided to three orders and distally to one. The female flowers are nearly twice as long as the male's, both contain three distinct sepals and petals, the former with 3 staminodes, the latter with 6 stamens. The globose fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 ripen from shiny green to black, each with one light brown seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

.