Butia odorata

Butia odorata, also known as the South American jelly palm, jelly palm, or pindo palm, is a Butia palm native to southernmost Brazil and Uruguay. This slow-growing palm grows up to 10m, although it is often less tall. It is identifiable by its feather palm pinnate leaves that arch inwards towards a thick stout trunk.

These palms are often called Butia capitata in horticulture. It was seen as a synonym of that more tropical species until 2011, and many botanical gardens, collectors, and those in the nursery trade have not yet changed their labelling. Even more confusingly; plants with the invented name B. capitata var. odorata have circulated in the horticultural trade which were actually the in 2010 newly named B. catarinensis, from further north along the Brazilian coast.

In Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, local vernacular names for this plant in Portuguese are butiá-da-praia, or just butiá.

The specific epithet odorata is derived from the Latin word for 'perfumed' and was chosen by João Barbosa Rodrigues in 1891 to reflect the highly aromatic nature of the fruit, considered among the best palm fruit for consumption in Brazil at the time.

Until 2011 this species was lumped together with Butia capitata, a species first described by Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in 1826 in montane grasslands in the inner country in Minas Gerais. During fieldwork in the southeast of the state of Bahia, the US palm botanist Larry R. Noblick observed the real B. capitata in situ, and being quite familiar with cultivated B. odorata in Florida where he worked, and having visited the coastal population in 1996, became convinced that they could not represent one of two very disjunct populations of the same species. Noblick incorrectly attempted to separate the taxa twice, in 2004 and 2010, before finally succeeding in 2011, choosing the oldest name which had unambiguously been given to this population: Cocos odorata by João Barbosa Rodrigues (C. pulposa was described in the same work, but O comes before P in the alphabet, so C. odorata has priority).

Odoardo Beccari subsumed this taxon as a variety under B. capitata in 1916 (as B. capitata var. odorata) along with a number of other taxa such as Cocos pulposa, C. elegantissima, C. erythrospatha and C. lilaceiflora, which he all made different varieties of B. capitata. He also named two new taxa as varieties of B. capitata: B. capitata var. subglobosa and B. capitata var. virescens.

In 1936 Liberty Hyde Bailey added two more varieties, B. capitata var. nehrlingiana and B. capitata var. strictior.

J. R. Mattos added yet another in 1977, B. capitata var. rubra, B. capitata thus having eleven different varieties at the time (see below). All except the nominate form are now considered synonyms of B. odorata.