Miniature Flame Thrower Palm

The Essence

"Actinokentia divaricata is a slender understory feather palm endemic to New Caledonia, best known for the brilliant dark red colour of each emerging leaf. Palmpedia gives it a height of 8-9 m on a smooth grey to light-brown trunk only 5-9 cm thick, carrying a sparse but gracefully symmetrical crown of just four to seven arching leaves. Standard botanical references record no common name for it at all - Genera Palmarum, Trebrown and Palmpedia all say so explicitly - but the Californian nursery Jungle Music sells it as the Miniature Flame Thrower Palm, and Palmpedia notes the suggestion that the red flush of a new leaf may function to repel leaf-chewing insects. Although it is one of the more commonly seen palms in habitat in New Caledonia, it remains rare in cultivation for a simple reason: seed is hard to come by. The species has been shuffled between genera repeatedly. Brongniart described it in 1873 as Kentiopsis divaricata, Dammer transferred it to Actinokentia in 1906, and in 2021 Hodel and Barrett sank the whole genus into Chambeyronia, making Chambeyronia divaricata the currently accepted name. POWO recognises two varieties, var. divaricata and var. flavolineata. A 'Watermelon' form with an attractively mottled crownshaft is known only from a small, recently discovered population. The old genus held just two New Caledonian species, A. divaricata and A. huerlimannii, which occupy different habitats and exposures where they meet on the flanks of Mont Nekando."

Genera Palmarum reports that the species was introduced into cultivation in Europe more than a century ago, and Palmpedia notes it is reported to have been used in the 19th century in much the same way as the indoor Kentia.