Disagreement exists as to whether "Attalea" should be considered a single genus, or a group of related genera. In their 1996 "Field Guide to the Palms of the Americas", Andrew Henderson, Gloria Galeano, and Rodrigo Bernal combined all the species in the subtribe Attaleinae (as it was then defined) into a single genus, "Attalea". In his 1999 "Taxonomic Treatment of Palm Subtribe Attaleinae", American botanist Sidney F. Glassman divided the group into five genera—a more narrowly defined "Attalea", "Orbignya", "Maximiliana", "Scheelea" and "Ynesa", although he thought it likely that "Ynesa colenda", the only member of that genus, was actually a hybrid. Rafäel Govaerts and John Dransfield recognised a single genus in their 2005 "World Checklist of Palms", and Jean-Christophe Pintaud continued this usage in his 2008 review of the genus.