Astrocaryum alatum is a species of palm with edible nuts, a flowering plant in the family Arecaceae. It is a common species found many types of rainforests and swamps in Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. It is locally known as the coquillo or coquito in Costa Rica. Description Astrocaryum alatum is the most common, least spiny and smallest of the three species of Astrocaryum in Costa Rica. It is a solitary palm, it does not form a cluster of trunks. The trunk grows up to six metres in height, often just two to four metres. It is fast-growing, faster than other Astrocaryum species. The ripe fruit are some 3.8–5 cm long and 3.2-3.8 cm in width. Typically, this species has fruit which are densely spiny on the end half, but smooth in the basal half where it connects to the rachis. The fruit are more-or-less obovoid, greenish brown to yellow-brown and have a small beak at their end. They are borne in compact, spicate clusters. The rachillae develop entirely from staminate tissue, and break easily or naturally when the fruit are fully ripe. The flesh is white, firm, and a few millimetres thick. Similar species In Costa Rica there are three species of Astrocaryum, and the other two species, A. confertum and A. standleyanum, are uncommon and restricted in range, although both are sympatric with A. alatum. This is the smallest, most common and least spiny species. It is the only species to have large fruit with spines on their distal ends, which are not a bright orange colour. It is also the only species to have leaves with unevenly divided leaflets which are arranged on a single plane, as opposed to multiple planes in the other two species, which gives their leaves a plumose appearance. The inflorescence of A. confertum is held erect, even when it is eventually covered in ripe fruit. A. mexicanum is the most similar species, so similar that in 1995 some experts noted the two taxa might be conspecific. Jean-Christophe Pintaud and colleagues provided a table of differences in anatomical leaf characteristics in 2008, which are rather subtle and require a microscope. The key provided notes the following differences: A. mexicanum has a thinner trunk without persistent leaf bases, but armed with rings or groups of flattened spines; smaller flowers with a proportionally smaller calyx and distinct, tooth-like staminodes (as opposed to staminodes merged