which he transferred from Trithrinax where it had been placed by Danish botanist Frederik Michael Liebmann when he described it in 1853, and A. warscewiczii, for which Wendland provided the first description. Acanthorrhiza aculeata was based on a specimen now considered to belong to C. nana, but was defined in such a way that it also included another species, C. stauracantha. It was not until 1935 that American botanist Harley Bartlett realised that A. aculeata was the same as the pair of species that had been described by Kunth. Both Corypha nana and Chamaerops mocini had been published at the same time in the same work, which meant that Bartlett had to designate a basionym, the "original" validly published name for the species. Bartlett chose the former, and went on to describe three new species. Paul H. Allen described two new species in 1953, bringing the total number of species to seven. Based on Randall J. Evans' doctoral dissertation, Henderson and colleagues recognised nine species in the genus, although they expressed the concern that the fragmentation of populations by habitat destruction may have exaggerated the difference between remaining populations, leading to an overestimate in the number of species. In his 1995 monograph on the genus, Evans recognised 10 species and two subspecies. Species The genus consists of 10 known species Cryosophila bartlettii R.J.Evans - Panama Cryosophila cookii Bartlett - Costa Rica Cryosophila grayumii R.J.Evans - Costa Rica Cryosophila guagara P.H.Allen - Costa Rica, Panama Cryosophila kalbreyeri (Dammer ex Burret) Dahlgren - Colombia, Panama Cryosophila macrocarpa R.J.Evans - Chocó region of Colombia Cryosophila nana Blume - Mexico: Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Chiapas Cryosophila stauracantha Heynh. R.J.Evans - Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico: Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo Cryosophila warscewiczii H.Wendl. Bartlett - Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras Cryosophila williamsii P.H.Allen - Honduras Distribution and status The genus Cryosophila ranges from central Mexico in the north to northern Colombia in the south. Several species in the genus are endangered, including Cryosophila williamsii which is, according to the IUCN Red List, extinct in the wild. All species are palms of the forest understorey, and nine of the ten species are found in lowland humid or wet forests. The tenth species, C. nana, is a tree of tropical dry forests. References Arecaceae genera Taxonomy articles created by Polbot