Astrocaryum alatum

Astrocaryum alatum, locally known as the coquillo or coquito, is a species of palm with edible nuts, a flowering plant in the family Arecaceae. It is a very common species found in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.

Astrocaryum alatum
Conservation status
Near Threatened  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Monocots
Clade:	Commelinids
Order:	Arecales
Family:	Arecaceae
Genus:	Astrocaryum
Species:	A. alatum
Binomial name
Astrocaryum alatum H.F.Loomis

For two decades the IUCN apparently mistakenly claimed it was rare.[2][1] The palm is actually very abundant and widespread,[3][4] but another taxon, Astrocaryum confertum-a very similar species to A. standleyanum, was formerly only known from a single 19th century collection in Costa Rica, the holotype copy of which had been lost with the Allied fire bombing of the Berlin museum and botanical garden and the only surviving isotype housed at Kew. Although this taxon had never actually been properly described until 1934,[5] nonetheless it was the only species of Astrocaryum said to occur in Costa Rica for much of the early 19th century,[6] until it became apparent that the palms in the country described under that name were instead the species A. alatum, and A. confertum became an enigmatic relic of history. After the name was encountered in the old literature by Grayum in 1988, and it was decided to see if the species was valid and might still be found growing in the area, A. confertum was quickly rediscovered. As at the time nothing was known about this taxon, it was thought to be potentially rare in the early 1990s, although it was soon also found to grow in Panama and Nicaragua.[5]

Andrew Henderson, who was compiling the palms for the IUCN for the first worldwide 1997 red list of plants, eventually published in 1998,[2] doubted the validity of the rediscovery of A. confertum at the time, stating "it is possibly conspecific with A. alatum" in his submission,[7] as in his 1995 book about the palms of the region, which he used as the main reference.[2] This 1995 book is known for tentatively lumping species, especially Astrocaryum.[8] The information appears to have gotten mixed up when entered into the first database built in the 1990s, with the entry in the 1998 IUCN book being under the heading A. alatum. The conservation status of the species was stated to be "indeterminate" overall, and "rare" in Costa Rica and Panama.[2] For more than two decades afterwards this mistake was repeated in the new online versions of the IUCN Red List, only now the conservation status was furthermore mistakenly upgraded to "lower risk: near threatened".[7][9]

In the 2020 version of the Red List the species was deleted from the servers.

Astrocaryum alatum is the most common, least spiny and smallest of the three species of Astrocaryum in Costa Rica. It occurs on both coasts of Costa Rica.[3]