Butia archeri is a small species of Butia palm with a short trunk native to the states of Goiás, Brasília, Minas Gerais and São Paulo in Brazil. It has been given the common name dwarf jelly palm in English. Local common names which have been recorded for this species are coqueirinho-do-campo, butiazinho and vassourinha. Taxonomy Sidney Fredrick Glassman first described this species in 1967 from a specimen collected by William Andrew Archer (no. 4048) in Minas Gerais. Glassman named the new species after the collector. Initially he considered it a type of Syagrus, because it had unarmed petioles. Among the many characters Odoardo Beccari used to distinguish the genus Butia from Syagrus in 1916, Glassman considered the most important to be the three seeds or locules in fruit, the presence of spines along the margins of the petiole, and the smooth rather than plicate spathes. Because Glassman had classified Butia archeri as a Syagrus, and this new taxon had smooth spathes and fruit with up to three seeds (along with a few other rare taxa at the time classified as Syagrus but at present Butia), he decided the genus Butia was indistinguishable from Syagrus, and in 1970 moved all Butia species to Syagrus. In 1979 Glassman changed his mind after looking at the anatomy of the cross-section of the pinnae (leaflets) and reclassified it as a Butia. Infraspecific diversity Butia archeri var. archeri - Native to Goiás, Brasília, Minas Gerais. Glaucous leaves. Butia archeri var. diamantinensis K. Soares [2015] - Native to the area around the town of Diamantina, Minas Gerais. Green leaves, wide pinnae clustered close together on the rachis, a leaf forming an almost spherical canopy. Description This is a solitary-trunked palm, with the trunk usually growing to maximally 1.3m in height and 10-21cm in diameter. It may be acaulescent sometimes, which means the trunk is very short and hidden underground. The 5 to 20 leaves are highly recurved. The leaf has a 5-18cm sheathing leaf base, an unarmed petiole 2-15cm long, a rachis 50–80cm long, and possessing 26-44 pinnae. The leaves are coloured glaucous (greyish) or green, depending on the variety. The pinnae are 25-40cm long and 1.3-2cm wide. The pinnae are inserted at a single plane on both sides of the rachis, such that a pair of pinnae form a 'V'-shape. In the nominate form the pinnae are arranged regularly down the length of the entire