Arecaceae

A palm is unmistakable in the field: an unbranched stem with no secondary thickening, and a crown of large pinnate or palmate leaves produced one at a time from a single apical bud. In the solitary-stemmed species that bud is the whole plant's future — lose the crown and there is nothing to replace it from. Clustering species, which sprout new stems from the base, are the exception.

In the Andes palms are strongly zoned by elevation, which makes them useful markers of where one is on the slope. Determination usually depends on the crownshaft, the leaf sheath and the inflorescence rather than on the leaves alone, so a photograph of a crown taken at distance will often carry a plant only as far as the family.