A palm tree (Mauritiella armata (Mart.) Burret) in Guyana with a man and smaller palm in the distance. Watercolour by E.A. Goodall, 1846.

A clustering palm with armed stems and deeply divided, fan-shaped leaves. A person holding a spear or staff and the outline of a smaller cluster of palms are in the background. Although the genus has come to comprise four species (M.F. Torres Jiménez et al. 'Phylogenomics of the palm tribe Lepidocaryeae (Calamoideae: Arecaceae) and description of a new species of Mauritiella', Systematic botany, 2022, 46: 863-874), M. armata is the only one that occurs in Guyana (A. Henderson et al., Field guide to the palms of the Americas, Princeton University Press 1995)