Editing Mauritia carana (section)

===Description:===
The Carana is a large caespitose, dioecious (male and female flowers on separate plants) palm, and is part of a unique tribe of seven species with reduplicate fan leaves and scaly (calamoides) fruit native to the new world.
This palm has a maximum trunk height of about 15m with 20-35cm diameter. Leaf bases entangled with an abundance of fibres may be persistent for more than ten years finally exposing a roughly close-ringed surface. The petioles are 1.5-2.8m long. Leaf laminas are 1.5-2.6m in diameter glossy deep green, forming more than 50 pendulous segments, each coming to a blunt point. The mid-vein of these segments in juvenile plants have flexible spines pointing towards the apex, that are usually absent in adult plants.
The growth habit is most remarkable. Most palms that are caespitose start with a single stem that ascends to a certain height before producing suckers. In contrast, this species grows as a clumping stemless plant for 5 to 15 years. In this juvenile state, it may have as many as ten shoots in the clump of 3-6m wide and 2-2.5m high. Not needing to reach for sunlight, the plant uses this early stage to gain strength before investing in the single central trunk, which then emerges above the rest of its foliage and after a few more years the secondary shoots die off and the main trunk commences flowering and fruiting.
Male or female inflorescences arise amongst the leaf-bases. These are 60-150cm long, arching, rachillas pendulous. Ripe fruit are spherical, 5-7cm diameter with a maroon/dull red scaly skin 2mm thick. Under the skin, there is a layer of flesh 6-10mm thick. It is relatively dry and starchy, bright yellow to orange in colour, rich in carotenoids and edible. There is one round seed of 22-35mm diameter.
The phyllotaxis is 1/3 in adult plants, which means the leaves form three vertical rows up the trunk like the “Triangle palm”, Dypsis decoryi. All members of its tribe have a phyllotaxis of ½ when seedlings but lose this early.