Roystonea oleracea(Jacq.) O.F.Cook

Imperial PalmCaribbean royal palm

WFO wfo-0000298338 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 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.

Roystonea oleracea, photographed by Diogo Luiz
fig. a Diogo Luiz, CC BY 4.0 / 2015-01-29 / obs. 52247368
Roystonea oleracea, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. b Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 95267784
Roystonea oleracea, photographed by Diogo Luiz
fig. c Diogo Luiz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 52247294
Roystonea oleracea, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. d Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75421732
Roystonea oleracea, photographed by Jens-Christian Svenning
fig. e Jens-Christian Svenning, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 75421737
Roystonea oleracea, photographed by Diogo Luiz
fig. f Diogo Luiz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126715064
Roystonea oleracea, photographed by Diogo Luiz
fig. g Diogo Luiz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126715121

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.

Native range 6 botanical countries

Regions where Roystonea oleracea is native: Colombia, Leeward Is., Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles, Windward Is. ColombiaTrinidad-TobagoVenezuela Leeward Is.Venezuelan AntillesWindward Is.
Native distribution of Roystonea oleracea, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Colombia CLM SOUTHERN AMERICA
Leeward Is. LEE
Trinidad-Tobago TRT
Venezuela VEN
Venezuelan Antilles VNA
Windward Is. WIN

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.

Also published as 12 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.

  • Areca oleracea Jacq.
  • Euterpe caribaea Spreng.
  • Gorgasia oleracea (Jacq.) O.F.Cook
  • Kentia oleracea (Jacq.) Seem. ex H.Wendl.
  • Oreodoxa caribaea (Spreng.) Dammer & Urb.
  • Oreodoxa oleracea (Jacq.) Mart.
  • Oreodoxa regia var. jenmanii Waby
  • Roystonea caribaea (Spreng.) P.Wilson
  • Roystonea oleracea var. excelsior L.H.Bailey
  • Roystonea oleracea var. jenmanii (Waby) Zona
  • Roystonea oleracea var. oleracea
  • Roystonea venezuelana L.H.Bailey

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.