Aiphanes horrida (coyure palm)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Aiphanes horrida, photographed by Andrés Ramírez-Barrera — fig. a Andrés Ramírez-Barrera, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-12-12 / obs. 173183570

Aiphanes horrida, photographed by Paul Hoekman — fig. c Paul Hoekman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193278168

Aiphanes horrida, photographed by Thalia M. Mite — fig. d Thalia M. Mite, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200750827

Aiphanes horrida, photographed by Carlos Alberto Rodriguez — fig. e Carlos Alberto Rodriguez, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 31239535

Aiphanes horrida, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning — fig. f Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75418733

Aiphanes horrida, photographed by GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ — fig. g GERMAN LEONEL SARMIENTO CRUZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 58659213

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium: The New York Botanical Garden
Accession: 02058390
Filed as: Aiphanes horrida (Jacq.) Burret
Det. by: N. D. Jiménez E. 2013-01-01
Collected: N. D. Jiménez E. 2013-12-12
Origin: CO
The sheet: View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 6 botanical countries

Native distribution of Aiphanes horrida, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Bolivia	BOL	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Brazil North	BZN
Colombia	CLM
Peru	PER
Trinidad-Tobago	TRT
Venezuela	VEN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 62 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	12.0 °C	15.1 °C	23.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	23.0 °C	25.8 °C	31.4 °C
Annual rainfall	1,348 mm	1,968 mm	4,027 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	88 mm	249 mm	533 mm

It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 62 research-grade observations of Aiphanes horrida that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 21 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Aiphanes aculeata Willd.
Aiphanes bicuspidata (H.Karst.) Ed.Otto
Aiphanes caryotifolia (Kunth) H.Wendl.
Aiphanes elegans (Linden & H.Wendl.) H.Wendl.
Aiphanes ernestii (Burret) Burret
Aiphanes orinocensis Burret
Aiphanes praemorsa (Poepp. ex Mart.) Burret
Bactris praemorsa Poepp. ex Mart.
Caryota horrida Jacq.
Euterpe aculeata (Willd.) Spreng.
Marara aculeata (Willd.) H.Karst. ex H.Wendl.
Marara bicuspidata H.Karst.
Marara caryotifolia (Kunth) H.Karst. ex H.Wendl.
Martinezia aculeata (Willd.) Klotzsch
Martinezia aiphanes Mart.
Martinezia caryotifolia Kunth
Martinezia elegans Linden & H.Wendl.
Martinezia ernestii Burret
Martinezia nobilis W.Bull
Martinezia ulei Dammer
Tilmia caryotifolia (Kunth) O.F.Cook

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol AICA5. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.