Cucua, Cocua, Maragua, Mastate, Namaqua Monoecious tree, to 27 m tall and 90 cm dbh, with low buttresses; outer bark thick; stems, petioles, stipules, and lower midrib of leaf armed with short sharp spines 1-3 mm long; sap copious, yellowish-brown. Leaves alternate; petioles stout, l-4 cm long, armed; stipules amplexicaul, 1.5-3 cm long, armed; blades variable, obliquely ovate to oblong-elliptic, obtuse to short-acuminate at apex, obtuse to rounded and inequilateral at base-, 10-40 (70) cm long, 6-25 (35) cm wide, usually glabrous in age, coriaceous. Staminate inflorescences globose, 1-2.3 cm diam, bearing many dense flowers; tepals 4, barely united; stamens 4, slightly exserted. Pistillate inflorescences ovoid, 1-1.5 cm diam, yellowish with (3) 5-9 flowers; perianth 4-dentate; stigmas deeply 2-lobed, exserted. Fruiting heads subglobose or ovoid, to 2.5 cm long, the individual carpels conic, irregularly angulate, sharply pointed at apex, the involucral bracts sharply pointed; seeds 1 per carpel, ovoid, shiny, brown, to 4 mm long. Croat 8533, 9280. Red spider monkeys have been seen eating the syncarp. Mexico to Bolivia. In Panama, known from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, San Blas, and Darien, from premontane wet forest in the Canal Zone, and from tropical wet forest in Colon and Darien.