Oenocarpus
(from oinos, wine, and karpos, a fruit; some of the species yield palm wine and oil). ORD. Palmae. A genus, sometimes confused with Euterpe, comprising eight species of stove, South American Palms, often unarmed and tall. Flowers monoecious, in Broom-like spikes, springing from beneath the leaves, and enveloped in double woody caducous spathes. Fruit often purple or black, oval or nearly round, with a granular, fibrous, oily flesh; one-seeded. Leaves in terminal crowns (in one species distichous), pinnate; segments narrow, or, rather, broad-ensiform, acuminate, rigid, and somewhat crisped; petioles short, and somewhat crisped. The species thrive best in a compost of peat and loam in equal parts. Propagated by seeds, or by suckers. The species here described are probably the only ones yet introduced. OE. Bacaba (Bacaba). fl., calyx thrice as short as the corolla; laciniae ovate-lanceolate; petals oblong, acute. Berry purplish-blue, sub-globose. l. sparse; pinnae linear-lanceolate. Trunk naked, 50ft. to 60ft. high. OE. Bataua. Patana Palm. fl., male calyx four times as short as the oblong and slightly acute petals. fr. cylindrical-elliptic, obtuse. l. dark green, pinnate, about 1 1/4ft. long, not produced in great abundance. Stem naked. h. 40ft. 1820. An elegant species.
OE. minor (lesser). fl., male calyx four times as short as the petals; spathes woody, outer one narrow-lanceolate, inner usually cylindrical, 1ft. or more long; spadix fuscous, with branches 1ft. or more long. fr. blackish-purple, as large as a Hazel-nut, ovate-acute. l. scattered, six to ten, erecto-patent or horizontally spreading, 6ft. to 8ft. long; pinnae 6ft. to 8ft. long, rather remote, the lower ones nearly alternate, the upper ones opposite and horizontally spreading, with a very long and acute mucrone. Trunk 10ft. or more high, naked, slender, flexuous.