The name Peridinium palatinum Lauterborn currently designates a freshwater peridinioid with 13 epithecal and six cingular plates, and no apical pore complex. Freshwater dinoflagellate floras classify it in Peridinium group palatinum together with P. pseudolaeve M. Lefèvre. General ultrastructure, flagellar apparatus, and pusular components of P. palatinum were examined by serial section TEM and compared to P. cinctum (O. F. Müll.) Ehrenb. and Peridiniopsis borgei Lemmerm., respectively, types of Peridinium and Peridiniopsis. Partial LSU rDNA sequences from P. palatinum, P. pseudolaeve and several peridinioids, woloszynskioids, gymnodinioids, and other dinoflagellates were used for a phylogenetic analysis. General morphology and tabulation of taxa in group palatinum were characterized by SEM. Differences in plate numbers, affecting both the epitheca and the cingulum, combine with differences in plate ornamentation and a suite of internal cell features to suggest a generic-level distinction between Peridinium group palatinum and typical Peridinium. The branching pattern of the phylogenetic tree is compatible with this conclusion, although with low support from bootstrap values and posterior probabilities, as are sequence divergences estimated between species in group palatinum, and typical Peridinium and Peridiniopsis. Palatinus nov. gen. is proposed with the new combinations Palatinus apiculatus nov. comb. (type species; syn. Peridinium palatinum), P. apiculatus var. laevis nov. comb., and P. pseudolaevis nov. comb. Distinctive characters for Palatinus include a smooth or slightly granulate, but not areolate, plate surface, a large central pyrenoid penetrated by cytoplasmic channels and radiating into chloroplast lobes, and the presence of a peduncle-homologous microtubular strand. Palatinus cells exit the theca through the antapical-postcingular area.