Manarano palm

The Essence

"Beccariophoenix madagascariensis is a solitary, coconut-like palm endemic to Madagascar and one of the country's rarest: only three severely fragmented populations are known, holding an estimated 900 mature trees, and GBIF carries just 130 occurrence records. Jumelle and Perrier de la Bathie already called it extremely rare and on the verge of extinction when they described it in 1915, Perrier attributing the decimation to constant harvesting of young leaves for hat-making. The young leaflets are still much sought after for "Manarano" hats, formerly exported in quantity; the palm is also used in house construction and for boxes, tapped for a sweet local drink, and killed outright for its palm heart and for the apical bud and young leaves, which are cooked as a vegetable. Until the mid-1980s it was virtually unknown and had been assumed extinct; the story of its rediscovery was told by John Dransfield in Principes in 1988, and PACSOA notes that one of his photographs shows the palms towering above the forest like giant feather dusters. A close relative of the coconut, it is grown as a cool-tolerant coconut look-alike - though much of what passed for this species in gardens was not: the windowed-leaf plant long grown under the name was given its own name, Beccariophoenix fenestralis, in 2014, and RarePalmSeeds describes the true species as the robust, tough-leaved, non-windowpane plant."

Until the mid-1980s the palm was virtually unknown and had been assumed extinct; the story of its rediscovery was told by John Dransfield in Principes 32(2): 59-68 (1988). After that article appeared, enthusiasts turned to obtaining seed and large quantities were soon exported from Madagascar, and PACSOA records that on a 1994 visit to Townsville Dransfield commented that some of these palms had been felled by an unscrupulous seed merchant. The 1995 monograph assessment was Critical: at Mantady the felling continued, with nine mature trees seen felled for their palm heart in July 1992 and fewer than 20 mature trees left there, plus some 20 in the southern population on white sand in an area threatened by strip-mining, and unconfirmed reports of another population near Toamasina where seed was said to be harvested for export. The species now stands as Vulnerable, but this is a downlisting rather than a recovery: Rakotoarinivo et al. (2014) list it as CR in 1995 and VU in 2012, with 30% of its populations inside the older MNP protected-area network rising to 80% under the expanded SAPM network, and note that the downlisting of Madagascar palms was primarily due to increased knowledge of their distributions and populations rather than an actual change in their threat status in the wild. Wikipedia and Monaco Nature Encyclopedia additionally list the species on CITES Appendix II, though this could not be verified against a primary CITES record.