Sometimes you see very dense clumps of slender-stemmed palms like those shown above. If you look closely you may find unusual, colorful flowers and fruits like those shown at the right.
That's the Bamboo Palm, Chamaedorea seifrizii, native to southern Mexico, including the Yucatan, and Central America, where it thrives as an understory species in the shade. One Internet page declares that the species' mature fruits are toxic.
A closely related and similarly shade-loving palm, Chamaedorea oblongata, grows wild in the southern Peninsula where it's rainier and the forest is higher.