He also cited another specimen collected by the entomologist Hermann Luederwaldt to the south of São Paulo (no.

[6][7] These specimens were all believed to be destroyed in 1943 during World War II by a fire caused by allied bombing.

[2] Similarly to B. eriospatha, it has woody spathes (in which the young inflorescence is developing) with the outside surface densely covered in a furry layer of lanate (woolly) tomentose indumentum;[2][14] these differ from the spathes of that species by the hairs being shorter and darker purplish-brown.

Within Paraná it occurs in the municipalities of Antônio Olinto, Carambeí, Jaguariaíva, Palmeira, Ponta Grossa, Sengés and Tibagi.

12267 Burret cited in 1930 was collected, according to him, in Raiz da Serra (in modern Cubatão), São Paulo, but the no.

Because of this, Glassman concluded that Butia microspadix was native to the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná, and possibly São Paulo if one accepted Burret's description (he apparently didn't read Burret's statement that the Sellow collection was also likely made in São Paulo).

[3][5] In 2014, however, Soares et al. and a curator of the São Paulo herbarium, Maria Mamede, pointed out that Luederwaldt had never been to Rio Grande do Sul, and spent his time in Brazil exclusively collecting in the vicinity of São Paulo, which meant that the specimen had simply been mislabelled.

[17] It is found in dry grasslands or steppes known as campos gerais,[2][5][17] where its unassuming habitus and thin leaflets makes it difficult to find camouflaged amongst the grass.

[20] It is collected by palm enthusiasts as an ornamental plant and seed has sometimes been available from specialist retailers since at least 2015, if not earlier.

[21] In 1979 Glassman claimed that the species appeared to be quite abundant in Paraná, apparently based on comments by Hatschbach.

In 2012 the Centro Nacional de Conservação da Flora rated the conservation status for Brazil as 'vulnerable', primarily due to habitat loss due to the pressure of agricultural expansion (although the actual extent of loss was yet unclear at the time).

[5] In a 2017 dissertation by Marcelo Piske Eslabão the species is said to ought to be considered 'vulnerable' as the IUCN categories B1ab (i, ii, iii) and B2ab (i, ii, iii) applied; this means that the extent of occurrence and area of occupancy (see distribution above) were below a certain threshold, and that according to Eslabão the population was in decline.

[16] According to Alberto Leonardo Barkema, a Brazilian expert in palm horticulture, in 2009, agriculture (soya, wheat, cattle pasture) has so decimated the remaining habitat, that this palm can usually only be found in the verges of natural vegetation in the berm along the edges of roads.

According to him it is being out-competed in such areas by more vigorous invasive species, notably grasses such as Pennisetum purpureum and those of the genus Brachiaria, as well as Eucalyptus and Pinus elliottii.

[22] Nigel Kembrey, an English specialist in Butia horticulture, seconds this, calling it "extremely rare and threatened".

[19] At Represa Alagados in Ponta Grossa, Paraná, it also grows on the grounds of a hydroelectric facility.