''Thrinax'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

in the palm family, native to the Caribbean. It is closely related to the genera ''

Coccothrinax ''Coccothrinax'' is a genus of palms in the family Arecaceae. There are more than 50 species described in the genus, plus many synonyms and subspecies. A new species ('' Coccothrinax spirituana'') was described as recently as 2017. Many ''Cocco ...

'', '' Hemithrinax'' and '' Zombia''. Flowers are small, bisexual and are borne on small stalks.

Taxonomy

In the first edition of '' Genera Palmarum'' (1987), Natalie Uhl and John Dransfield placed the genus ''Thrinax'' in subfamily Coryphoideae,

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

Corypheae and

subtribe Subtribe is a taxonomic category ranking which is below the rank of tribe and above genus. The standard suffix for a subtribe is -ina (in animals) or -inae (in plants). The early use of this word is from 19th century. An example of subtribe i ...

Thrinacinae. Subsequent

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

analyses showed that the

Old World The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by th ...

and

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...

members of Thrinacinae are not closely related and as a consequence, ''Thrinax'' and related genera were transferred into their own tribe,

Cryosophileae Cryosophileae is a tribe of palms in the subfamily Coryphoideae. The tribe ranges from southern South America, through Central America, into Mexico and the Caribbean. It includes New World genera formerly included in the tribe Thrinacinae ...

. In 2008, '' Leucothrinax morrisii'' (formerly ''T. morrisii'') was split from ''Thrinax'' after

studies showed that its inclusion in ''Thrinax'' would render that genus

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

Species

''Thrinax'' consists of three species.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q142326 Arecaceae genera Trees of the Caribbean Taxa named by Olof Swartz