Calamus Foxworthyi

The Essence

"Calamus foxworthyi is a climbing rattan endemic to Palawan, in the Philippines. Odoardo Beccari described it in 1913 from a specimen that Frederick William Foxworthy had collected on Victoria Peaks in 1906. Plants of the World Online records it as a liana of the wet tropical biome, and Co's Digital Flora of the Philippines gives its elevation range as 500-1050 m. In Andrew Henderson's 2020 revision of Calamus the name was reduced to a subspecies, Calamus zollingeri subsp. foxworthyi, and GBIF now treats Calamus foxworthyi Becc. as a synonym of that combination. No detailed morphological account of this Palawan taxon is available in freely accessible sources, so no measurements of stem, leaf or fruit are given here. Its cane is used for basketry and weaving, and it is listed as Endangered on the Philippine national list of threatened plants."

Beccari published the species in 1913, in the Annals of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta (11, Appendix: 81). The name was taken up again by Beccari in 1919 and by Merrill in his Enumeration of Philippine Flowering Plants in 1923. In Henderson's 2020 revision of Calamus - which examined 8,633 herbarium specimens and recognised 411 phylogenetic species - it was recombined as Calamus zollingeri subsp. foxworthyi (Phytotaxa 445: 467), alongside a second subspecies, subsp. merrillii. Its conservation status has been assessed nationally rather than globally: neither Calamus foxworthyi nor Calamus zollingeri has been evaluated for the IUCN Red List, but DENR Administrative Order 2017-11, the updated national list of threatened Philippine plants, lists Calamus foxworthyi Becc. as entry 214 under Category B, Endangered. Sumabat et al. (2024) likewise rank it a high conservation priority among endemic Philippine palms.