Coastal mountains in Venezuela and south along the Andes and in the W Amazon region to S Peru.
Distribution in Ecuador. In Ecuador it is frequent in moist tropical and premontane forest east of the Andes, sometimes forming very large groups in swampy areas, whereas it tends to form smaller groups or even single-stemmed individuals on well drained soil.
(Borchsenius F., Borgtoft-Pedersen H. and Baslev H. 1998. Manual to the Palms of Ecuador. AAU Reports 37. Department of Systematic Botany, University of Aarhus, Denmark in collaboration with Pontificia Universidad Catalica del Ecuador)
Coastal range, Andes, and adjacent regions of Venezuela (Apure, Carabobo, Mérida, Táchira) and Colombia (Norte de Santander), south to the western Amazon region in Colombia (Amazonas, Meta, Vaupes), Venezuela (Amazonas, Bolívar), Ecuador (Marana-Santiago, Napa, Pastaza,Sucumbros), Peru (Amazonas, Loreto, Ucayali), and Brazil (Acre, Amazonas); lowland to montane rain forest on well-drained slopes, at 100-1400 m elevation.
(Henderson, A.J., Bactris (Palmae) in Flora Neotropica Monographs 79. 2000)