Gaussia attenuata is a palm

Arecaceae

Arecaceae or Palmae , are a family of flowering plants, the only family in the monocot order Arecales. There are roughly 202 currently known genera with around 2600 species, most of which are restricted to tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate climates...

 which is native to the Dominican Republic

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...

 and Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

. The species grows on steep-sided limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 hills (known as mogote

Mogote

Mogotes are isolated, steep-sided, residual, hills, which are composed of either limestone, marble, or dolomite and surrounded by nearly flat alluvial plains. These hills typically have a rounded, tower-like form. This term was originally used for karst hills developed in the folded limestone in...

s) in Puerto Rico.

Gaussia attenuata trees are up to 15 metres tall with grey stems which are swollen at the base and tapering above. Stems are 15 to 25 centimetres in diameter. Trees have five to seven pinnate

Pinnate

Pinnate is a term used to describe feather-like or multi-divided features arising from both sides of a common axis in plant or animal structures, and comes from the Latin word pinna meaning "feather", "wing", or "fin". A similar term is pectinate, which refers to a comb-like arrangement of parts...

ly compound leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

. Fruit are orange-red, 1.4 to 1.6 cm long and 1.2 cm in diameter, with one to three seeds.